by Andrea Speed
Table of Contents
Blurb
Dedication
1—Our Love Can Destroy This Whole Fucking World
2—Hell Is My Backup Plan
3—Lost Arts
4—Five Feet And A Hammer
5—Are We Saved Or Are We Damned
After The End
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Copyright
Darlings of New Midnight
By Andrea Speed
There’s more than one way to interpret destiny.
The Son of Satan, a demon hunter, a mummy, a witch, a harpy, and the messenger of an elder god walk into a bar… and try to prevent the apocalypse? The devil isn’t thrilled, and frankly the angels aren’t either. But from the bowels of Hell to the chilly halls of Heaven, from Thailand to Tacoma to the bottom of the ocean, this ragtag group of supernaturals plans to fight the prophecy and save the world or die trying. With enemies among the most powerful beings ever to exist and allies they can’t trust as far as they can throw them, they’d better get their act together fast.
To my Mom and Charlie. Thanks for everything.
1—Our Love Can Destroy This Whole Fucking World
LOGAN KNEW he must be getting close, because he got vampires thrown at him. Well, they were throwing themselves at him. Still counted, right?
One minute, he’d been alone in an abandoned sewer tunnel, and now he had a bunch of the yellow-eyed bloodsuckers attacking him. But he was always prepared and had his handy minimachete with him. He’d sewed a special holster for it inside his jacket, which was probably one of the craftier/nerdier things he’d ever done.
The first vamp launched itself at him, flashing its fangs and showing razor-sharp nails, and he met it with a smooth arc of the machete. Logan sliced through its neck cleanly, sending its head one way while its body continued its suicide trajectory toward him. The thing about garlic and stakes through the heart? Bullshit. Like most monsters, they were most susceptible to decapitation. Very little survived without its head.
Logan sidestepped the corpse, but another bloodsucker grabbed him from behind. It attempted to bite his neck but hit the silver collar he wore whenever he went into dark, possibly monster-infested places. Yes, it looked like a choker, therefore pretty ridiculous on him, but it was just for these eventualities. Silver didn’t hurt vampires, but they didn’t like it, and it hissed and recoiled as he threw back a hard elbow and crushed its nose before turning around and hacking its head off with his machete.
It would have been so nice if real vampires were like most pop-culture vampires—rich, vicious effetes who lived in mansions and penthouses. In reality, they were nocturnal predators that liked to hide and not draw too much attention to themselves. So they loved dark, grotty places, like sewer tunnels and crumbling basements. It was really disappointing.
One of the vamps got smart and kicked him hard in the back, sending Logan stumbling into the arms of two other vampires, who stripped him of his machete. He would have worried if he didn’t have his peashooter.
Of course, that wasn’t what it was. It was a bit of do-it-yourself ad hoc weaponry that he and Ceri had gotten great at improvising. It was essentially a pellet gun that shot iron nails, which, if decapitation wasn’t a current option, would do as a neutralizer when fired into the head.
The bloodsucker that had Logan was a real ugly-looking one, with a face like a wood knot come to life and too many needle-fine teeth crammed in too small a mouth. It screeched at him, and its breath was rank, like it had been washing abandoned bus station socks in kerosene in its gullet. Logan pulled out the peashooter and put a nail point-blank in the center of its forehead. As it fell away, yellow eyes rolling up into the back of its head, its friend had grabbed him painfully by the hair and started dragging him, perhaps to its nest. He glanced up long enough to get a general idea of where its head was, and fired the peashooter again. In what was impressive good luck on his part, or bad luck on the vamp’s part, Logan got the bloodsucker right in the eye. It screeched and let him go, clawing at its own face to try to get at the offending piece of metal.
Logan shot another one coming for him and was able to shove himself against a wall so nothing could grab him from behind. He shot a fourth in the face while looking for the machete and found it a few feet down the way. Dammit.
He was plotting the path to it when a booming female voice asked, “Where is your hellhound, Logan?”
Ceri really hated that nickname, which was why pricks like the vamps liked to use it. “Now why the hell would I tell you a goddamn thing, your highness?” She was the queen of the vamps, so she deserved some respect. Not much.
The uninjured vampires had ceased their attack because when she spoke, her people listened. Or they got killed. She ran a tight ship. “Is he not here?”
“Yeah, ’cause I’m known to go into monster-infested places alone.” He wasn’t. Like he wasn’t known to go places without several redundant backup weapons. Because in a fight, assholes like this went for your weapons first thing. Multiples were good.
“Sarcasm impresses no one.” She was a tall shadow with glowing yellow eyes. Vampires couldn’t shape-shift, save for the queen. She could make herself a shadow or a bat or a column of smoke. It made her almost impossible to hurt in any meaningful way, which is why she was the queen, and all the others followed her orders.
“Like I give a shit. I came here for the Amulet of Azrael. You can give it to me and I’ll stop killing your people and leave, or we can continue to do this, although I’ll ask Ceri to join me and we’ll be done in ten seconds. Maybe throw us a palace coup as well.”
Her voice took on a cold, sharp edge. “Are you threatening me?”
“Do I have to?” Considering how things had been going all topsy-turvy lately, he had no idea if the vampires were generally for or against the end of the world. It seemed like they changed their minds every other day. “It’s not your property. Hell, it ain’t mine either. It’s Ceri’s, and he wants it. And if you’re not willing to give it to me, I’ll call him down here and you can give it to him yourself. Or he can take it.”
She made a noise of disgust, and the amulet came flying from out of the darkness and crashed at his feet. Considering what it was, it should have looked special or impressive, but it looked exactly like an old, tarnished necklace. The gold chain seemed like it had seen better decades, and the pendant part looked like a glass eye embedded in a flattened bottle cap. How was this an icon of power? But Logan wasn’t in charge of this. He was a lowly human who’d never wanted to get in the middle of this insanity. He simply didn’t have a choice.
The conscious and uninjured vampires seemed to disappear into the darkness, a neat perk of being one of their kind. “Take your necklace and go, Fox. The next time we meet, it’ll probably be your last.”
“Sure,” he said, deadpan, picking up the necklace. Despite it looking like costume jewelry some cheap great-aunt left to a relative in a will, when he touched it, a nearly electrical surge of power flashed through him. This thing was crazy dangerous even in the right hands, and the vamps were definitely the wrong ones. Not that he’d trust anyone with this beyond Ceri.
Before leaving the sewer, Logan retrieved his machete, because while it was troubling and stupid to have a favorite one, he still did. Ceri probably would have teased him for it, if he were here.
Because that was all a bluff. Ceri was at home, recuperating from his last battle with Azazel and his minions, who’d launched that Lucifer-level bomb at him. In fact, if he found out Logan had come alone, he’d probably be f
urious. It was stupid, it was dangerous, and he could have ended up vampire chow—or worse yet, a vampire himself. Although Ceri would have made them pay in a very final, bloody way that would’ve made them sorry they were ever created.
And all of this—this collecting of powerful supernatural objects—was a sort of Hail Mary play. Even if they got them all, they might not have enough mystical energy to stop the apocalypse. But they had to try, right?
Logan secured the amulet in a special bag, marked up with all the sigils that would render it and its power essentially invisible to anyone looking for it. It was a bad idea to have mystical nukes like this floating around, although with the end of the world on the horizon, most people didn’t really give a shit. Sometimes Logan didn’t give a shit either. Sometimes it was nearly impossible for him to get out of bed. But with Ceri beside him, he’d figure something out. He had to. It was either that or let the world burn.
And if truth be told? Logan would let it burn if it weren’t for Ceri, and Logan’s sister, Gillian. Except sometimes it was the reason Logan wanted it all to burn.
He drove home, letting the cold night air heal the few scrapes he’d gotten fighting the vamps. They’d blend in with the rest of his scrapes and bruises, as he usually had some. Ceri said that with all his scars, he looked a bit like a chewed-up old tomcat, and he offered to heal them. But Logan liked his scars. Well, most of them. There was a story in each one, and they generally had happy endings. Well, okayish endings. He lived, which was no small feat. Okay, most of the time. He had died a couple of times. But not for long, so they barely counted.
Logan was hoping Ceri would still be sleeping, but when he entered their home, he heard the water running in the bathroom. He was glad he’d made a quick pit stop for groceries because now he had an excuse for why he’d been gone. Logan hid the protected amulet in the kitchen stash box Esme’d made, before heading into the bedroom, where he undressed carefully, making sure he had no obvious, still-bleeding injuries. He didn’t and considered himself lucky.
Ceri exited the bathroom, clad only in boxers. “Where the hell have you been?” Ceri asked, yawning. He climbed back into bed before Logan could respond.
That was okay by him. Logan crossed the room and got in on his side of the bed. So far, so good. Logan was also glad Ceri had his glamour off and was simply showing his own skin.
A weird thing about species hybrids was they could come out looking one of several different ways, and while everyone thought Ceri looked human—and they were right—it was only because he protected himself with a glamour. Without it, he was two-toned.
It wasn’t an even split down the middle. His left side was mostly humanish, with bronze skin and an amber/hazel eye. But unglamoured, his right side bore red demon skin, and his eye was white pupiled and had black sclera, which he occasionally didn’t bother to include in the glamour for its intimidation properties. Demon skin was slightly more leatherlike, and because it wasn’t an even split, the borders of it roamed. He had more on his chest, for example, than his stomach, and while the front of his right leg was red, the back was mostly bronze. He also had two thick, nub-like black horns, usually covered by his black hair even when the glamour wasn’t in place.
When Logan first met him, he thought Ceri was the most ridiculously handsome man he had ever seen. When he first saw him without the glamour—with the right half of his face red and his eye white—Logan still thought he was the most ridiculously handsome man he had ever met. Ceri had been afraid he’d reject him or call him ugly, as so many had before. Logan kissed him all along the border where the demon skin melded with the human, and they ended up having the most intense, meaningful sex he had ever had in his life.
Before Ceri, Logan was very much a one-night stand type of guy, because he learned very quickly that attachments left a person weak and hurting when they couldn’t afford to be. Ceri had changed that. Logan had never believed in such a soppy concept as soul mates—until now. They were connected in ways that couldn’t always be quantified. He loved Ceri with every fiber of his being and couldn’t imagine life without him. At this point, he couldn’t live without him, and he didn’t mean that in some crazy, possessive, stalkerish way. He meant it literally. Without him, there was no point to living. If Ceri were gone, the world could fucking burn.
Logan snuggled into his arms, hip to hip, and rested his head on his shoulder. Ceri kissed him on the top of his head and sniffed. “Your hair smells terrible.”
“I haven’t washed it for a few days.” He’d forgotten about the whole old-sewer-tunnel terrible-smell thing. How?
“Really?” Ceri replied. Was that doubt in his voice? Logan thought he was safe for a moment, because Ceri was quiet for several long seconds. Then he said, “Now tell me where you really were.”
“Out buying those hard lemonades that someone seems to like so much,” he said with an eye roll. Ceri loved hard lemonades; he drank them like some people ate candy. Which is what they were to Logan, who found them too sweet and cloying to enjoy. To be fair, he didn’t like too many beers either. He was picky. “Also potato chips. Somebody keeps eating them all.”
“That isn’t completely my fault. You eat them too.”
“Usually not by the sackful.”
“They’re a human food. Is it my fault if you don’t know how to eat them properly?” Ceri said, playing innocent. He was good at that.
“You’re lucky you’re so cute. Otherwise I’d kick you out on your ass.” This was a running joke between the two of them. They both randomly threatened to kick each other’s ass, but wouldn’t, because said asses were too pretty. It startled people who didn’t realize it was an inside joke.
Ceri patted him on the arm. “What did you sneak out and get?”
“What?” Shit.
“Hmm. Judging by the smell of your hair, I’m gonna guess… you made a trip to the sewer? Who lives in the sewer? You didn’t try and find where the vampire queen was hiding, did you?”
“Umm… if I say I have no idea what you’re talking about, you’ll throw me out of the bed, won’t you.” Did he tell Ceri about the amulet yet or not? Maybe he should wait until tomorrow. It wasn’t going anywhere.
“No, I’m not that cruel.” Ceri sighed, and Logan felt it on his neck. “I wish you’d stop feeling like you have to prove yourself. You’re the only human who’s ever fought demons and lived. You have street cred! Now stop being insecure before it gets you killed.”
“I’m not insecure. Am I?” Oh God, of course he was. But that’s what happened to the only regular guy in a group of supernatural superbeings.
“If you have to ask…,” Ceri said and then kissed him on top of the head again.
Logan gave him an anemic slap on the arm, but it was barely a love tap. Being stubborn bastards was one of the main things they had in common. Logan realized he was in danger of dozing off, and he didn’t want to, so he turned to Ceri and kissed him.
Their kisses were always passionate, always hungry. Logan loved kissing Ceri. Generally, when he started, he couldn’t stop. He loved the taste of him, the way he’d envelop him in his arms, and how it made him feel loved and safe. So much of his life, he’d never quite felt either.
Logan gently straddled Ceri, never breaking the kiss, and Ceri slipped his arms around Logan’s waist. Their lovemaking, as usual, took Logan to a place he could never afterward describe.
When they slept, unless it was screaming hot, they found it kind of impossible not to snuggle together. Logan, who was used to sleeping alone even when he slept with someone else, had found he didn’t mind it. He actually liked it. It went back to feeling safe and loved, wrapped in Ceri’s embrace.
Logan knew no one would understand that. Learning Ceri was half-demon, they expected he’d be a maniac. Learning of his parentage, they assumed he was an attack dog with plutonium teeth and cyanide blood. Which was why Ceri being so sweet and loving threw everyone off. Even Logan hadn’t quite understood it at first. But Ceri was
n’t his father, or his mother either. He was himself, and the best thing either of them ever created. His father would deny that, but his father was the universe’s biggest asshole, so of course he would. Ceri was his North Star, his light, and Logan would not give him up for anything.
Even the end of the world.
LOGAN’S PHONE vibrated on the nightstand, waking him up. He grumbled and wasn’t going to answer, but he picked it up to at least see who was calling. The display simply read Stop trying to block me, asshole. There was only one person that could be. Logan still wouldn’t have answered, but she might have tried to invade his dreams if he didn’t, and the first time, that had been as ugly as fuck.
“Fuck off, Gill,” he said, jamming the phone to his ear.
“What kind of way is that to greet your sister?” Gillian replied.
“You’re not my sister anymore.”
“I am, though, now more than ever. I’ve met my potential. You threw it away to fuck a demon.”
“Hanging up now,” Logan said, pulling the phone away.
“Fine,” he heard Gill say. Since she’d joined the holy assholes, her voice had taken on a colder, sharper edge. Not that Gill had been all sunshine and puppies when she was human, but he knew who she was. She was his shyer, homelier—ha!—sister, the one he pretty much raised when their mother finally succumbed to alcoholism and insanity. Although the latter was partially, if not completely, down to demons who had tormented her for years. And all because of her stupid doomed kids. “I know the Amulet of Azrael is off the board. You should give it to us.”
“And help bring on the end of the world? Yeah, I’m getting right on that.”
“You can’t give it to the demons. You know what they’ll do with it.”
“The same fucking thing. I’m not giving it to either side.”
“You can’t use it. You haven’t activated your potential yet.” Gill paused, and then her voice seemed to get frostier. “Oh, you’re giving it to him.”
