Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (28 page)

While she spoke quietly into her cell, he patted his pocket for his own phone. He felt a surge of relief that he’d had the foresight to put the thing on vibrate. It wouldn’t do for Frank Sinatra’s dulcet voice in Charles’s ringtone to blow his cover.

“Who this time?” he muttered.

Pop
flashed on the screen along with the older demon’s smiling countenance.

“Resorting to human means of communication,” Charles said with a chuckle. “I should have expected it.” Normally, Pop communicated with his children telepathically, but unlike some of his half-siblings, Charles was a strong enough psychic to block him out. He didn’t used to bother. When Pop said, “Jump,” Charles would do it on one foot with one hand raised in salute.

“Bet he regrets sobering me up.” He tapped
Send to Voice Mail
and nudged the phone into his pocket once more.

There was no way Pop could have predicted some of his children would turn on him. They usually succumbed to the power, got lost in it.

John had been lucky. His incubus powers hadn’t been online long enough for the dark seed to take root and he’d been successfully exorcized of them, thanks to Claude. John got all the immortal perks without the heavy conscience. Neither Claude nor Charles could hope for such a thing, not at their ages. The demon halves of them had settled in comfortably, and were something they’d have to live with until they died—whenever that was.

“It’s the same wheel I keep putting fresh tires on. What the hell is wrong with it?” Marion shouted into her phone. She shouldn’t have been so damned cute kicking that big tire, but she was. “Do they ever blow out during the daytime? Fuck, no. Always in the goddamned dark in the motherfucking snow and ice. When is your guy going to be here to fix it? Do me a favor and tell him in advance not to feel obligated to make small talk. Can you believe that people find little old me unpleasant?”

He clasped his hand over his mouth and nose and stifled the laugh. God, he couldn’t wait to get his hands on her. She’d have some spirit. She wouldn’t just lie there, waiting to be taken. No, she’d give back as good as she got.

Right now, with her shielded the way she was, he could touch her.
Kiss
her, as he’d done to no human woman in so long that he couldn’t even remember. He could hold her. Make love to her while without doing her any lasting harm—at least, not more than a couple of days. Then she’d be like all the rest. Weak. Vulnerable. Powerless against him. She’d go glassy-eyed and incoherent in his presence. Whatever common sense she’d had would suddenly evaporate. The little voice in her head that usually warned her away from dangerous things would go quiet, because he overpowered instinct.

He wanted her
before
she didn’t have a say in the matter. He wanted to give her the chance to say no, though he hoped she wouldn’t.

One last interruption to endure, courtesy of Marion’s tire, and she was as good as his. Even if he could only touch her for a day or two, she’d be worth his long wait.

Marion had no idea why she’d picked up that extra load. She’d had the opportunity to take a couple of extra days off, but the trucking company asked her if she’d wanted the money, and she’d said yes without even thinking.

Dumb. What was she going to do with the money? Yeah, she could dump it into the fund she’d started four years ago when she’d first starting driving trucks—the one she’d meant to put down on her first home. She’d been feeding the fund bi-weekly for nearly six years, and it was fat as a tick. She had no expenses, really, beyond food and toiletries. For chrissakes, she lived in her truck cab. That meant no rent, and no utilities beyond her cell phone, and she paid that bill a few months in advance. The only cash she kept on hand were the quarters she used to wash her small wardrobe, and she showered in those dank truck stop facilities. She carried shower gel, a bath pouf, shampoo, shaving cream, a sparkly pink razor, and a Smith & Wesson knife in her shower caddy, and pretended that was a normal thing.

Having a house to make her landing pad was a damned appealing idea for a girl like her. She was an orphan who’d come up through the foster care system. Moving from one family to the next every six months or so, she’d acquired no real grasp on stability, but still she yearned for it. Not just the house, but all the trappings of it—including the family to go with it.

She figured if only she could find her landing pad, everything else would fall beautifully into place. House, first. Then she’d dip a toe into the dating pool and try to rustle up a man who wouldn’t try so hard to tamp down her spirit of exploration. Later, if all went well, she’d have a kid or two.

As she burned up the roads, traveling long stretches of desolate highway, she stoked that excitement to fervor levels—but once she’d delivered her loads and settled in for a night, she froze up. All that enthusiasm waned away as if being siphoned off by some unseen force. It was like there was some magic wall that pushed up out of the earth and barred her access every time she wanted to get
serious
about the idea.

Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. Maybe she was meant to wander.

She sighed and watched the tire repairman’s taillights disappear as he hauled ass to his next call.

Goddamned tire. Third flat in three days.

She bent to pick up the receipt she’d dropped, and then yelped at the sight of the stranger six feet from her. She blew her fright away on an exhale and put her hand to her heart.

Why did they always frighten her? By now, she should have been used to strange men approaching her. Sometimes they heckled her—the “little girl” truck driver
.
Occasionally, they tried to sell her things. Dick and weed, mostly. One she didn’t partake in. The other she sure as shit wasn’t going to pay for, even if she were that kind of desperate.

She rolled her eyes and shook her head, hoping he’d catch the drift. Not that they ever did. Bozos.

“Cold night, isn’t it?” he asked. His voice was deep and cultured in the way Shakespearean actors’ voices were.
Trained
. Odd, seeing as how the only culture this guy had likely rubbed off from the newspapers he slept on. She cocked her head to the side and really studied him. Maybe he was experiencing some sort of delusion and believed he was on the set of a BBC miniseries or something. Maybe a modern retelling of
The Taming of the Shrew
. She knew which character she’d be cast as, and was already gearing up to play the role if he said something sufficiently stupid. And he would. There was always something wrong with these truck stop guys. Pity, because this one was hot. He had to be around six and a half feet tall, and a nicely proportionate breadth to go with that height. Not bulky, but there were definitely some muscles beneath that jacket. He had to outweigh her by a good hundred pounds.

He fixed a stare on her she couldn’t tell was from blue or gray eyes beneath the pole light, but either way, it was oddly mesmerizing. She couldn’t bring herself to break free of it, although it somehow made her feel exposed.

Naked.

Why was he looking at her like that—like he knew her? She’d never seen the man before. She certainly would have remembered those startling eyes and all that dark hair. Jesus, she liked a bit of mane on her men. Someone could slap him on the cover of a romance novel. Just wrap him in tartan, hand him a sword, and set up an unobtainable fantasy for a few thousand women.

She pursed her lips, considering him. Nah, she’d read probably a hundred thrift store romance novels in the past year, and this guy was too tan to be a Scotsman and not dark enough to be a sheikh. Greek tycoon, maybe? Oh yeah. Put him on the deck of a yacht wearing some of those little European swim trunks and—

“Isn’t it?” he repeated, and raised one dark eyebrow.

“Huh?” She blinked. Did he want something?

He shifted his weight and shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, grinning at her. Shit, he could have lit up the entire parking lot with that smile. He was so pretty—now, what did he want with her? Whatever it was, she wasn’t paying for it.

She closed her eyes and drew in a bolstering breath. “It’s cold,” she said blandly and tossed the wadded up receipt into her truck cab.

“Montana’s a pretty inhospitable place, huh? There’s still a month until winter, but I don’t think the snow cares about timeliness.”

“Mm-hmm.” She patted her pockets in search of her keys. The next thing he’d probably say was that he could make it a
lot
more hospitable for her, if she had enough cash.

Prostitutes were pretty predictable, and she certainly got propositioned enough, though usually the truck stop hos were a little less—upright.

But, shit, did she really look like the kind of woman who’d pay a man for sex? She wrapped her fingers around the handle, prepared to slam the door.

He moved closer and grabbed the door’s edge before she could pull it. “Hey, why don’t you let me buy you a cup of coffee? You look like you could use a cup.”

“I don’t think so, dude.”

She could afford her own coffee, obviously, but no prostitute had ever offered to buy her anything. Must have been a new sales strategy—the
hook ’em, then hump ’em
.

She just wanted to get back on the road, but he was right. She did need to refill her thermos, fiend that she was. Coffee was her one vice, and she’d forgotten to take the canister into the restaurant with her during dinner. She didn’t want to give the guy the satisfaction, though, no matter how good he looked.

She let her gaze fall on him once again. He looked harmless enough, with his easy stance and hands jammed into the pockets of his coat. His boots were actually quite good quality. Brown leather with some scuffs. Broken in, and wet from snow, but they looked damned expensive. Didn’t seem like hand-me-downs, either. The heels were too good.

There must have been good money in truck stop whoring.

“No, thank you,” she finally managed, and gripped the door handle again after two failed attempts. “I-I need to get back on the road and get this load delivered.”

“Must be lonely,” he said. His grin waned slowly, and this time it was he who looked away, toward a truck entering the lot. He waited until it had circled around to the gas pumps.

“It’s a job,” she said when he looked up again.
Damn, those eyes.
They were so sad, and for some reason, that made her a little sad, too. “It is what it is.”

“Do you have a long drive ahead? Maybe you’d like some company for a while before you strike out.”

She opened her mouth to make some snarky retort, but closed it without letting the words pass her lips. Loneliness wasn’t really one of her temperatures, but curiosity was. What was the harm in a cup of coffee?

No, no. She wouldn’t go there. She was too smart for that. “Pretty long, yeah. But I’m used to it.”

“Are you on a deadline?”

“Of course I am. I get paid more if I get it there early.” Fat lot of good that extra money would do her. It’d be more money she wouldn’t spend, and she was becoming increasingly aware that the economy didn’t work that way.

“I promise I won’t hold you up long.”

“Sorry, no. I need to get moving.” It was as difficult as swimming against a tide, but somehow, she managed to close the door and start her ignition. She did have a long drive ahead, and she wanted to deliver her load in time to celebrate her birthday. She had great plans for once. She’d find a nice hotel room, order room service, and watch cable television from a soft, clean bed. Maybe she’d find someplace with a spa and get a massage and haircut.

She squealed at the thought as she released her brakes, her mood already improving. It’d be fabulous. A rare indulgence in girliness. She had no aversion to nice things and the occasional slick of lipstick, but since she’d started driving trucks, she’d given up those things, for the most part. The male drivers thought she was a dilettante and talked down to her, and the women assumed she was some sort of lipstick lesbian. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but she liked men.

Sane, normal ones, anyway.

Definitely not like the prostitute she saw watching her depart through her rearview mirror.

Why was it that fifty miles later, she was still thinking about him and wondering: If she drove back, would he still be there?

After a quick meal to refuel his spent body, Charles strode out of the truck stop restaurant and rooted in his coat pocket for his phone. Fuck, why did he let her drive off?

He’d wanted to be cautious—to not swoop in like a wrecking ball and make her swoon. He didn’t want her drunk off magic until he was certain she could break free of it, but apparently, Charles the man had zero swagger without the incubus mojo. He was running out of time, so when he did catch up to her again, he’d have to be aggressive.

She didn’t know the circumstances of her birth, or that there were people looking for her. Good ones and bad ones. The good ones wanted to draw her into the family, love her. Protect her. The bad ones wanted to use her as payment for what was taken from them.

His phone buzzed in his hand as he studied the map on the display. He slid his thumb across the touch screen to connect the call from John. “Hello, Number Three,” he said, and strode toward the motorcycle he’d parked beside the restaurant. It was way too fucking cold to be riding, and the roads weren’t great for it, but he’d missed taking the old thing out. He’d bought it back in the seventies off a fairy whose old lady thought he was neglecting certain household duties. It’d been in storage for a couple of dozen years, and Charles had gone to fetch it especially for this mission. Usually, he accepted rides from the women he claimed, but given he was on an unauthorized vacation from demonizing, he’d had to arrange for his own transportation.

“Hey, Two,” John responded. “Did you—” Before John could get the words out, Ariel piped up in the background, “Did he find her? We’re running out of time.”

John must have covered the phone with his hand because the sound decreased suddenly, but Charles could still hear his brother’s typically calm response. “I think he knows that, sweet pea. Maybe you should add a splash of whiskey to that cup of coffee. Might make you feel better.”