Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (32 page)

She padded into the living room, figuring she’d see what the guy was all about. “Huh.
Living
room. Doesn’t look like there’s much living going on here.” She trailed her fingers along the chair rail as she made her way around the room, studying the little impersonal touches that had most certainly been left behind by some designer or girlfriend. The décor was simply too cohesive for a single guy who worked for a trucking company.

Bending at the waist, she studied the small, framed map of old Coeur d’Alene that perched on one of the sofa’s end tables. “Or maybe his mother decorated the place.”

It was a nice little house, but definitely didn’t speak to Marion’s artistic preferences. When she was out on the road with nothing to do but stare at asphalt and the horizon, she often thought about what kind of home she’d put that big hunk of savings toward. Maybe a renovated loft looking down onto bustling city streets?

She entered the bathroom, pressed the light switch up, and let out a little squeal of jubilation upon spotting the tub. It was deep and magnificent, made of cast iron and propped up on claw feet. The overflow drain was up high, so she could sink in up to her neck and let the stress from the past few weeks of driving flow from her muscles. She stuck the stopper in the drain, turned on the bathroom’s heater, and started the water before heading back to the bedroom for her bag.

She plucked out her toiletry kit, and mused, “No, not a loft …” Being on ground level seemed better. Someplace where she could see kids streaking past on their bikes and scooters. Maybe a townhouse with a stoop where she could sit with a good book on the weekends and chat with folks she knew as they strolled by.

Yeah, she liked that idea, and the idea of
community
. Even if she were alone, there’d be people around. She was tired of being alone.

She brushed her teeth and let her mind flit over the U.S. map that had become ingrained in her brain after years of driving. Where would her little townhouse be?

She’d spent some time in Chicago, and loved the vitality there. There was a lot to see and do, should she have time to do it. Maybe she could find some neighborhood filled with young professionals or families with small kids. Someplace with a lot of life and bustle.

She rinsed her mouth and shook her head.

Nah, not Chicago. If she was going to put down roots like a tree, she wanted it to at least be someplace she’d thrive. Someplace warm most months of the year.

She capped her toothbrush and pinned her long bangs back with a metal clip. Shrugging off her shirt, she pondered some more. Maybe go back to Ohio? Buy a little house there? It was certainly a central place for a long-haul trucker to live.

“Hell no.” She dipped a cautious elbow into the bathwater and found it just shy of scalding, just the way she liked it. She could never get water that hot in hotels. Their water heaters were set too low because of liability issues.

She wrenched the water knobs to their off positions, and shed her socks and pants. Bra and panties came last, and she rolled her eyes at the boring, utilitarian things piled there on the floor. They were damn near institutional. Plain white and purchased in bulk. No one ever saw them, and since she always washed clothes at truck stop laundries, having one color cut down on her loads.

She sank into the water up to her lips and closed her eyes. “Okay. To-do list while I’m on birthday vacation. Number one, go online and find someplace to live. Number two, buy underwear that doesn’t suck. Number three …” She giggled. “Find someone to show new underwear to.”

Pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, her thoughts turned to the man who’d graciously loaned her his home for the day.

Maybe she didn’t have to look so hard for that last thing on her list.

• • •

When Pop arrived at the coffee shop, Charles knew it without even looking up from his tea. Even with his back turned to the door, the demon’s presence registered with him down to his bones. If anyone else in the room knew they were in the arena of a being nearly as old as the universe, they didn’t react. They kept chatting. Kept laughing. Kept sipping.

Pop slipped into the seat across from him and removed his dark sunglasses, studying Charles with those seemingly bottomless blue eyes. Charles often thought if he stared long enough into his father’s gaze, he’d see far enough back in time to witness the moment of creation.
Old soul
didn’t even begin to describe the demon Gulielmus.

“Trucker,” Pop acknowledged after a long moment of uncomfortable silence.

Charles bobbed his head in a small nod. “Pop.”

“I haven’t been to Idaho in about fifty years.”

“You and me both.”

“Needed a change of scenery?”

Charles couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like Pop shuddered in revulsion.

“You couldn’t have picked someplace warm?”

Charles shrugged and warmed his fingers around his paper cup. “Remember, you summoned
me
this morning, and this is where I’m passing through at the moment. I was on the road and remembered I had a house here. Decided to see it.”

Pop never could quite tell when he was lying, or lying by omission, but his narrowed eyes indicated his suspicion. He wouldn’t press, though. After all, Charles had inherited that particular lying skill from him.

Pop leaned back in his seat, and the wooden chair groaned from the exertion. At seven feet tall, he was an imposing figure, even without his looks. He could change forms at will, but his true form—the one he’d fallen to Earth with—had hair as yellow as the morning sun and eyes as blue as the Caribbean. That was the form he was in today. He turned heads whenever he went, and rarely bothered with being discreet. His ego was too large for discretion.

Up until John had come into the picture, Charles was the lucky fucker who most resembled the demon—only his hair was dark like his mother’s. John got the blond. All the boys got the height, more or less. Claude was the shortest between him, Charles, and John at six-two. Claude’s mother had been tiny. Both Charles and John stood at around six and a half feet tall.

In spite of his Earth-sized ego, if Pop realized how many women in the room were staring in their direction, he didn’t acknowledge them. That wasn’t a good thing. Whenever Pop ignored women, it meant he had business on the brain.

Charles was sick of his business.

“Still sober?” Pop asked in a flat voice.

“Yes.”

“Interesting. What’s that, ninety days?”

“No. Hundred and fifty this time.”

Pop shrugged. “Sorry. Been busy. Days start to blur after a million years or so.”

Charles hoped the world would cease to exist before he saw that many years. He took a sip of his tea and waited for Pop to get on with it. Pop had summoned
him
, after all. Charles had merely picked the spot for the meeting. He wanted to get back to Marion. He only had a few precious hours with her at most, and he was squandering them being in audience of his father.

“Hundred and fifty days … and how many women have you been with in all that time, Trucker?”

Here we go.
Charles set down his cup and studied his nails. He didn’t have to think that hard. “I think you know the answer to that. You get the reports from Central Office, don’t you? You should know how many new souls I’ve earmarked for them.”

Pop’s eyes narrowed again. “I was hoping there was a delay in the reporting.” He leaned across the table and lowered his voice to a whispery hiss. “I thought I lit a pretty hot fire under your ass last year. You were the most productive of all my children, and I offered you a chance for upward advancement. I picked
you
, yet in the past year, you’ve not only not avoided my summonses twenty times and subverted the scouts I sent out to find you, but you’ve done no work. Are you fucking kidding me? Would you seriously have me believe you haven’t touched a woman in a year?”

Charles laced his fingers atop the table and ground his teeth.

The only woman he’d touched even casually lately had been Julia—until Marion, that is.

“Maybe I can’t do it without the booze,” he said.

“And maybe I’ll reach through your neck and grab your spine with my bare hands if you keep toying with me.” Pop leaned back and let his natural charms ooze out as the barista sidled over to the table.

Funny, Charles hadn’t been aware they had table service. He’d had to get in the line like everyone else.

“Can I … get you anything, sir?” Her voice quavered, and her hands wrung the canvas of the apron tied at her waist.

Charles studied her. Read her, in the way he’d always been so good at. She couldn’t have been much more than twenty. Young, redheaded, and a little bit stupid. Pop’s favorite type.

Charles rolled his eyes and stared out the window. He hated watching this shit, and it happened almost every time he met his father in a public place. That was why he’d ignored so many summonses. He hated seeing his father work, but he also didn’t want to meet the man in private. He was scary in private.

“Yes, sweetheart, a very large Kona to go,” Pop purred.

“Oh! Okay. I’ll see if we have any left.” She turned to walk back to the counter, but before she could get too far, Pop extended an arm and scooped her in close, caressing her waist with a familiarity he didn’t possess.

As always, his poor victim didn’t seem to mind.

Rage broiled in Charles’s gut, and he fisted his hands on his lap, afraid his anger’s outlet would be his crushing of his teacup. How would he explain why he had no burns?

He had to keep Marion far away from Pop. If possible, he didn’t even want the man to learn her name. If he knew her name, he’d disrespect it.

“It’s all right if you don’t have any, darling,” Pop said to the woman. “Just find me something rich and dark.”

She sucked in a sharp breath, and her tongue glided across her parted lips. If Pop squeezed her just so, she’d probably have an orgasm then and there. He’d managed it before. It wasn’t hard. In the trade, they called those little minimal-contact orgasms “Gateway O’s.” They were just a small taste of what sex demons could give, and once their victims had one, they always followed wherever the demon took them.

“Rich and dark,” she said, eyelids fluttering. “Yeah. Be right back.”

Pop let her go and leaned in close to Charles again. “When I really set my mind to doing something, I get it done. I asked you to spawn an army. Do you know why?”

Spawn. Like frogs and snakes. Appropriate.

“I don’t really care, but you’re going to tell me anyway, right?”

“Can the attitude. I think I liked you better when you were a drunk. You didn’t talk back.”

“Yup.” True that, he hadn’t.

“I picked
you
because you have power to spare to keep them in check. You’re not like most of my children. They get power only from me, and wouldn’t have any otherwise. But
you
—you have power of your own.”

“No, I have power from my mother. You know, the dead one.” His voice was flippant, but his mounting anger had him seeing red. How dare Pop mention Charles’s mother after what he’d done to her?

Pop bared his teeth. “Semantics. Claude has power from his mother, too, as does that meddlesome brother of yours, John. I suspect he has something to do with Julia disappearing from her compound. I went to find my sweet little girl, to get her online, and she was gone. That made me angry.”

“Hmm.” Charles pushed up both eyebrows and hoped he conveyed adequate surprise about his half-sister’s disappearance. Julia hadn’t actually disappeared. He and Claude had helped her escape back in February. She was now married to a pro baseball-playing alpha werewolf named Calvin and occasionally popped in at Clarissa’s. Teleporting spared the duo a six-hour drive, though it made Calvin a bit green around the gills.

Charles lifted both shoulders and grunted. “Sucks to be you, I guess. Word must be getting around about you. If I were those poor kids of yours, I’d run, too.” He cracked his knuckles and held up his left palm. “I’d run before you had a chance to do
this
to me.” His skin burned hot, and his father’s gaze tracked down to Charles’s glowing palm.

Pop was unmoved. Why wouldn’t he be? He was the one who’d put the mark there that brought all that made Charles a demon to the surface. Without that mark, he wouldn’t have been an incubus. He wouldn’t be able to hurt women that way.

“I think you’ve been spending too much time around Claude. Maybe you two should have a little break. Your attitude is wearying.”

“You know what’s wearying? This line of conversation is wearying. Claude and I have been buddy-buddy since around 1910 when you brought me online and then abandoned me for a year to find my own way. Remember that?”

“That period of my existence is somewhat hazy,” Pop said.

“Yeah. My last hundred years or so have been hazy. If it weren’t for Claude, I would have found a sharp sword to fall neck-first onto a long time ago. Leave me alone. I’ve delivered more souls to you in a century than Mary-Catherine has in nearly five hundred years. I have it on good authority that you don’t nag her about productivity.”

He shrugged. “Sue me. I’m a demon. I’m allowed to pick favorites, but let me tell you this.” Pop leaned in once more and projected his warning psychically.
Get your shit together or I’m going to assign you a keeper. One you’ll take no particular joy in having accompany you. He has a bit of a grudge against you anyway, so he’ll love to be wielding the whip.

Before Charles could ask who his father meant, Pop said,
You don’t even know your own kid’s name, do you? It’s Ross.

Charles leaned back in his chair, jaw flapping.

Pop cleared his throat as the barista returned with his drink. He grabbed it and stood, wrapping his arm around her waist.

She giggled.

“Tell you what, Trucker. You’re right. You used to be a good worker for me, so I’ll make a deal with you and offer a little incentive. Would you like that?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“I don’t have to. Red here’s gonna take care of that for me, isn’t that right?”