Familiar Demon

by Amy Lane

  “Good,” Francis said shortly. “Maybe Emma will stop trying to send you away.”

  Bel’s laugh went evil. “So, can we have this discussion now? You can’t keep up the force field and go cat on us, and you can’t block my voice like you can my telepathy. I’m going to repeat this: I don’t want to go. Maybe if we act grown-up and talk to my parents about why we don’t want me to leave, they won’t keep putting their foot down.”

  Francis let out a yowl of exasperation—but he stayed human, which was great, because Edward could feel the force field around them, and while it was strong—damned near impenetrable—now, he wasn’t sure what losing one more person would do for it.

  “Bel!” Francis hissed. “We don’t want to talk about this now—”

  “Oh yes I by God do,” Beltane said grimly, and Edward had a chance to reevaluate all those moments of thinking about him as his little brother. He was an adult now, of what? Twenty-two winters? He would live immortally, as Emma would have if she hadn’t given her power up—first for Leonard and her three familiars, and then in order to live as a mortal to have Bel—but that didn’t make him any less able to know his own mind now. “Is there anyone in this car who does not know that Francis and I are lovers?”

  “No,” Harry responded behind them. “And there’s nobody back home who doesn’t know either.”

  Francis’s mewl of unhappiness was very catlike—but his control over his human form and the shield that kept them safe never wavered. “That’s not fair!” he wailed. “You’re not supposed to—”

  “What?” Edward demanded. “Know? Because you both made it damned hard to miss. Say anything? Well, we haven’t, but apparently living in the shadows isn’t good enough for Beltane, and it shouldn’t be good enough for you.”

  “Jesus, Francis,” Harry said, his voice rasping as he coughed. “The whole family celebrated Suriel’s return. We’re welcoming Mullins with open arms. Don’t you think we’d want to celebrate you two as well?”

  “But I like home,” Francis said softly, and Edward’s chest ached.

  “So do I,” Bel told him, voice assuming a patience Edward was damned proud of. “I wouldn’t make you leave. There’s enough room in the house for us as brothers if we can’t be lovers. Don’t you have some faith in me?”

  “You’re not the one who can’t be human,” Francis said shortly. “And I’m done. I can’t. I can’t have this conversation anymore.”

  Bel let out a sigh of frustration, and then, to the car in general, said, “If you’re not human, then human isn’t what I want. I’ve met other warlocks, Francis. I’ve met other witches too, for that matter—that’s why Mum wanted to send me to Oxford. But I haven’t met another Francis. I haven’t met anyone who does the things to my heart that you do. Don’t tell me that’s a bad thing because I won’t believe it.”

  The silence in the car was electric.

  Finally Francis let out a breath. “Fine. Whatever. They know anyway.”

  Edward could practically feel everybody’s patient eye roll, but it was Mullins who spoke up.

  “Francis, you may not be Bel’s brother anymore, but you are definitely Emma and Leonard’s son. Remember, nobody in this car is strictly human. That doesn’t seem to be a sticking point with them.”

  “That’s kind, Mullins,” Francis said, and even Edward could hear his voice soften. But when he spoke next, he was obviously done for the moment. “This is a thing in my heart. There are many things there—it’s a confusing place. Someday, maybe I’ll tell you all of them. But for right now, I just… just want Bel. He’s my one clear thing. Can I have Bel and not talk for now?” He sounded near tears. “Harry’s sick. I got used to him not being close to death. And there’s bad things after Mullins. And he’s not a beast anymore. I liked the beast, Mullins. He comforted me. The world is changing; can I not keep my one clear thing?”

  Bel’s sigh filled the car. “Okay, beloved,” he said gently. In the back there was shifting, and when Edward checked the rearview, he saw Bel and Francis in their customary pose—Beltane with Francis in his arms, drawn back against his broad chest. “But please sort out your words in the next ten to fifteen years. Forever is a very long time in this family, and I’d rather spend it happy than waiting.”

  So grown up. In his head he felt the gentle mental nudge of Mullins, who had spoken to him like this sometimes as a demon, but never as a man.

  What are you thinking?

  Beltane is an adult. We watched him be born—Harry, Leonard, and I acting as midwives. We watched him take his first steps. These last months, we’ve been thinking, ‘What will we do about Beltane and Francis,’ but the fact is, they’re grown. Thinking about Francis as the one to protect is many long years of habit—but his heart has obviously been protecting itself just as long. I’m thinking their road together is probably more fraught and more difficult than we ever imagined, but that it is—of all of us—most singularly their road. I needed help to claim my beloved, and my brothers all jumped in a minivan and chased me around the world. But Francis needs help claiming his beloved, and first he must claim himself, and there’s nothing any of us can do about that.

  Mullins’s very warm hand on his knee surprised him, and he had to remember to keep his eyes on the road.

  But that didn’t stop him from taking one hand off the wheel for a moment so he could briefly lace fingers with Mullins, who apparently had known all of that in Edward’s mind, but had wanted to hear him say it anyway.

  CALIFORNIA’S TOPOGRAPHY changed drastically between Mendocino and Foresthill. From rich green forests with giant redwoods to sparse hills filled with oak and scrub. From the oak and scrub to the flat farmlands, and from the farmlands to the Sacramento valley—more farmland, but with the delta and the river to give some hope and some greenery to the scene. And then up again, to the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, to red dirt and pine, dusty in the summer, and now, in the spring, rich and ripe and cool with promise. There were lakes here, and the memory of snow.

  Mullins looked about eagerly, remarking upon each change, upon the temperature outside when they stopped for gas or to use the bathroom. He would remember places—Sacramento in the 1800s, for example—but he’d been released from hell spottily, and his journeys had always been missions.

  Watching him enjoy himself, take time to see where he was and how it connected to where he had been, marked quite a change from the young man who hadn’t even known where he’d lived during his earlier mortal life.

  Edward’s heart filled with quiet delight each time he remarked on the changes of the age, the people, the landscape.

  And it filled with purpose every time he felt a charge against the shields that kept them all safe, as long as they stayed close together when they were stopped.

  Harry slept for much of the journey, but when Suriel woke him for medicine, Edward noted that he gave the febrifuges again too.

  At their second stop—this one for food too, since Bel and Francis were both starving—Edward helped Suriel out of the back since his long legs were cramping, and looked in on his brother, still asleep.

  “How’s he do—”

  “Worse,” Suriel said shortly. “He’s responding to the medicines but….” Suriel shook his head. “Like Leonard said—infection. This one seems particularly stubborn—and I think he’s right about it being supernaturally driven too. You boys have successfully warded off a variety of diseases—starting with the ones I healed you of the night Emma found you. Every little cold you got, every sniffle, was driven away by the magic in your bodies giving your immune system a tremendous boost. This isn’t earthbound, and it’s not like the other viruses that have evolved, and your systems along with it. I’m pouring what I can into him but….” He bit his lip, uncharacteristically uncertain.

  “You’re helping to shore up the wards in the car,” Edward realized. “Well, maybe we can have Mullins do that so you can heal Harry—”

  But Suriel was shaking his head. “No.
Because if we sustain an attack right now, he’ll be helpless.”

  Edward swallowed. “Dammit. He had to see the elves—”

  “He had to be here for you.” Suriel’s usually serene face sharpened. “Please tell me you understand that, Edward.”

  Edward swallowed, remembering that meeting in the Market, when he both cursed his brothers for interfering and blessed them, because damn if he didn’t love them.

  “I do,” he said softly. “Let’s get to Foresthill and see if maybe Green can help. Emma seemed to place a lot of faith in him.”

  Suriel nodded. “He’s strong, your brother. We can hope.”

  Of course Suriel had always been made of hope, but Edward and Harry, they’d needed help.

  After they’d gotten gas—and sandwiches, of course, for Beltane and Francis—and they were on the road again, Mullins turned down the roar of 90s grunge rock—Harry’s favorite musical time period to date—and asked him softly, “How’s he doing?”

  “Not well,” Edward told him, gnawing on his lip. He didn’t want to tell Mullins about the hope that Emma’s Elven King could heal him. They were going to ask him for three hairs—it seemed invasive enough without adding, “Oh yes, and help our brother out too because getting this far was rough going.”

  “You know this isn’t our last stop, don’t you?” Mullins asked him anxiously. “Maybe we should have Emma pull Harry back and we can go looking for my sister’s descendants instead.”

  Edward shook his head. “Have a scrying spell all ready,” he said. “I put it together before we even started the quest. We need to talk to Green and get Harry better, and then we’ll be good to go.”

  “Edward,” Mullins said, his voice sharp and sober. “Look—if it’s a choice between Harry’s health and me spending more time in hell—”

  “Who makes that choice!” Edward muttered, stomach sinking. “Why would you even say that?”

  “Because the world’s an unfair place, and when you dabble with angels and demons that kind of thing shows up,” Mullins retorted. “And look, I have hope now. I can go through another four centuries if I know I have you at the end. Don’t sacrifice your brother because you think this is your only chance. That’s all I wanted to say.”

  Edward shook his head. “I refuse to believe we have to do this again,” he growled. “I would. I’d do it a thousand times over. I just….” Even over the music, even over the engine noise, he heard the tenor of his brother’s breathing change, grow a little bit worse. “I’d just rather not visit corn chip and lily land again,” he muttered. “I just….” His heart constricted. “I love you more now than ever, Mullins. How am I going to say goodbye one more time?”

  The heat of Mullins’s hand on his knee shored him up. “By knowing it’s not the last time. Knowing it never will be. I will always come when summoned, Edward. Always.”

  Edward remembered that discussion—how summoning a demon when he was being detained in the depths of hell could be the cruelest torment of them all.

  “I don’t want to hurt—”

  Mullins shook his head, his voice trembling. “Remember how well that worked for Suriel and Harry?”

  Because it hadn’t. Harry had refused to call Suriel, knowing what it cost him—and Suriel had fallen in love anyway.

  Edward swallowed, his throat tight. An hour—they had an hour up Highway 80 and then half an hour on Foresthill Road. Surely God, the fates, Goddess, or even the mysterious other could not gang up on them for an hour and a half, right?

  He felt a hit to the wards outside the minivan and fought it off, then faced what Mullins had just said.

  “We will never give up,” he said, meaning it. “Even if we’re sent reeling all the way back, at least we know the way.”

  “Exactly,” Mullins said, sounding strong. “They can keep my body in hell as long as they need to. We both know my heart is free and sound in your hands, Edward. That alone will sustain us.”

  Edward nodded and laced his fingers briefly with Mullins’s.

  Then he put both hands on the wheel and stepped on the gas. They were so damned close to help.

  ONCE THEY took the turn into Highway 49 and drove over the double bridge spanning the canyon, the entire minivan took a breath.

  “Oh my God,” Beltane said on an exhale of relief. “Can you feel that?”

  “It’s like… not wards, exactly,” Suriel said in wonder. “But like the wards we’re near are so damned strong they sort of scrubbed anything in the area.”

  “I can feel them,” Francis said dreamily. “Can you all see it? That mountain over there—it’s glowing.”

  Edward kept his eyes on the road—but he eyeballed the mountain Francis was talking about. “I see a faint shimmer,” he admitted. “But not a glow—”

  “It’s practically blinding!” Francis objected, then let out a breath. “But at least you can see it,” he said, almost disconsolately.

  Beltane shifted his knees into Edward’s seat for the umpteenth time, which probably meant he was pulling Francis closer. “I love that you see things differently,” he murmured. “It gives us all better vision.”

  Oh, bless the boy for being Emma and Leonard’s son. Until the two of them had their confrontation that morning, Edward had no idea that part of the peril of elves would come from within.

  A FEW miles past the bridge, before the start of the town proper, Edward saw a small service road winding between two hills and turned left onto it. The road was graveled but not paved, and as Edward drove, he had to fight an almost uncontrollable urge to turn around.

  “No!” he said after a moment. “I’m not turning around because you are as plain as day, and dammit, we can see you! Please! We don’t mean any harm, we’re just asking a favor!”

  As if in answer, a large wooden gate appeared, as though a veil had been torn off of it, and Edward had to screech to a halt, leaving just enough space for it to swing open.

  The gate had a spring latch and looked as though it swung both in and out, and Edward looked at Mullins—and then at Francis through the rearview.

  “Francis? Given that you’re seeing a glow when we’re seeing heat distortion, maybe it’s less dangerous for you to get out, you think?”

  Francis pulled out of Bel’s embrace, almost eager. “So, like I can help?” he asked, excited.

  “You’re always a help,” Harry wheezed from the back. “This time, you have very special qualifications.” He hauled in a deep breath then and coughed, and Francis turned toward the back seat.

  “You sound like Suriel,” he said almost gently. “We need to fix you so you sound more like Harry.”

  And with that he opened the door and trotted to the gate, swung it toward Edward, and then ran to secure it and gesture them in.

  “I’ll close it behind you,” he called as Edward rolled down the window. “Don’t worry—I’ll come find you after you park.”

  A balm rolled in through the window—that’s the only way Edward could describe it. Soothing, fresh—a spring smell. Sun on rocks, cinnamon and roses, mustard flowers, pine trees and solid red earth. All of it combined headily, and Mullins and Beltane struggled to roll down their windows to flood the car with the freshness of hope.

  From the back, Harry took one of his first decent breaths for the last hour.

  “Oh wow,” he mumbled. “That’s amazing.”

  The driveway was lined for the first quarter of a mile—a sort of ground cover, rich and pale green with pink or yellow flowers, seemed to spring up between pine trees on one side and oak on the other.

  “That is so wrong,” Beltane said flatly.

  “What? I think it’s pretty!” Suriel responded.

  “Yes, but it’s not natural!” Mullins shook his head. “I scribed a lot of botany over the years—that is Scotch Heather, and it usually grows in the sandy soil of the coast, where it’s temperate. It gets mighty hot here—”

  “But it’s not,” Edward pondered. “It was getting to be around
eighty degrees after we cleared Redding. It’s much cooler here.”

  Bel let out a low whistle. “Temperature control—I like it! That’s nth level shit right there.” He looked behind them. “Francis has turned. Can I go out and run with him?” He let out a wistful sigh. “Please, Edward? It’s been hard on us both. We don’t talk well with words.”

  Edward slowed enough for Beltane to get out, and in his rearview mirror he watched the big blond dog run to touch noses with the small Siamese cat.

  “They’re going to need to find words eventually,” he muttered, but they all knew he was as helpless as the rest of them.

  Instead, they looked forward, to the end of the path, and Edward missed Bel’s low whistle.

  “Look at that,” he said softly, and behind him, Harry struggled to sit up.

  “That house is built into the top of the hill,” Harry said in wonder. It appeared as though a window wrapped around half the mountain—probably the main living level—and most of the rest of the hill sloped up to a smooth dome.

  “Those trees up there are… unusual,” Mullins said. And then, “But damn. Look at the gardens.”

  As the minivan rounded the last bend, they saw the driveway passed directly in front of the house to a garage that seemed to be the ground floor of the house—completely under the hill. A smaller house sat across the driveway—fairly large, in fact, a red-painted farmhouse complete with white trim—but dwarfed in comparison to the greatness of the house inside the hill. Beyond the driveway sat what should have been the front yard, if a front yard was bigger than a football field and boasted its own pond, complete with a small orchard and a great stretch of grass surrounded by patches of flowers planted in orderly chaos around the lawn.

  “That’s stunning,” Suriel said in awe. “Just… oh my word. Harry. That’s beautiful. I have no words.”

  “Look,” Harry murmured, weak but happy. “Elves.”

  Elves having a picnic, from the looks of it.