Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (44 page)

“It feels so good it hurts, right? Well, that’s kind of what being an incubus feels like sometimes. There’s a hunger there that needs to be fed, and the weakest of us let it control us. That’s what I feel like when I think about you and I can’t touch you.”

“Please,” she whispered.

“Don’t. Tease. Psychics,” he said, and he straightened up and grabbed the doorknob. “We don’t have to touch you to hurt you. Remember that.”

He left the bathroom, closed the door behind him, and walked toward the kitchen.

He released her orgasm as he approached the table, and she screamed, swore, and pounded the wall in the bathroom.

Clarissa jumped up from the table. “What happened?” She started moving toward the bathroom, but Claude grabbed her hand as she passed.

“I wouldn’t go in there,” he said, and cast a narrow red glare at his brother.

Charles grabbed a coffee cup and filled it. “Hey. She started it.”

“It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to sit down and have a dignified conversation, hasn’t it?” Pop trailed his index finger around the rim of his crystal water glass and offered his son a shit-eating grin.

Charles didn’t know how he’d ever thought John was the spitting image of the man. When John smiled, he put his whole heart in it. His joy was obvious to anyone with half a brain. On the other hand, Pop often looked like a snake retracting his jaw before a kill.

The sommelier strode over with some aged red wine, the bottle wrapped in a white cloth napkin, and Charles put his hand over his empty glass. “No, thank you.”

“It’s a good vintage,” Pop said, pushing his own wine glass closer to the edge of the table.

“Have you forgotten I no longer drink?”

“I’m the one who sobered you up. I never forget.”

“Your memory has been selective in the past.”

Pop dismissed the sommelier, having him leave the bottle, and picked up his glass by the stem. “Well, aren’t you just chock full of cheek today?”

“I believe you sometimes lose your grasp on aging. I’m not a little boy, not some adolescent testing his boundaries. I’m one hundred and twenty-three years old. Puberty was a long time ago, so if I’m giving you
cheek,
as you so quaintly call it, it’s because you deserve it.”

A low growl rumbled from Pop’s throat that made their dinner companion—the redhead whose name turned out to be Arlene—startle in her seat.

Charles set his elbows on the table and laced his fingers. Pathetic. Pop could put lipstick on a sow all he wanted to, but she’d never be more than just a vessel. She was the kind of person he never felt so bad about condemning to Hell because she didn’t contribute anything noteworthy to the world. She had no backbone, no personality, and no passion. He couldn’t love a woman like that.

But Pop didn’t really love
anyone
, save himself.

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me? Surely, you’ve noticed Red’s glowing countenance.”

Charles pushed up an eyebrow and shifted his gaze to Arlene.

She grinned like a chimp hopped up on Pixy Stix and bounced in her seat.

Poor idiot
.

“We may be in early days, but once they implant, they tend to stick around. Do you see how easy that was?”

Was he seriously discussing this as if the woman
wasn’t
sitting right there? Charles rolled his eyes and nudged his lemon wedge into his water glass. “Congratulations, Arlene, and good luck. You’ll need it.”

“Have you even tried, Trucker?”

“Pretty sure you know the answer to that. Your hellish bureaucrat friends probably have a hotline in place to inform you the
moment
I bag someone. Obviously, I haven’t.” He leaned forward a bit and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Why don’t you go ahead and bench me for the rest of the eternal season?”

Pop’s expression was a blank. “Why would I do that? That sounds far too much like you getting something you want.”

“Are you seriously playing reverse psychology games on me? Dear
Lord
.”

Charles searched his memory banks for the name of the appropriate god to pray to that his child wouldn’t have his proclivities—that she’d be normal, like Marion. Then she’d never have to worry about doing harm with just a simple touch, because no way was she going to be a player in Pop’s world domination schemes. As it was, he could hardly forgive himself for going along with it.

He’d said
yes
to the man because he’d been angry with his mother. He’d done a stupid, rash thing as a young man, and a hundred years later, the guilt hadn’t ebbed one bit. It would serve him just right if she hated him, wherever she was. She was good and loving and that hadn’t been good enough back then because she’d held back the truth. Now he knew she’d done it to protect him, and he would do the same for his daughter if he had to.

His
daughter
, Agatha had said.

A little girl.

At least he’d be able to hold her. That would be the good of the situation. He couldn’t do harm to his offspring, although he’d had no practice with such things. That was a known fact. For his child, he’d be an energy null, and her to him. The more startling revelation was that Marion, by bearing his child, was now forever immune to the dangerous effects of his touch.

It was a hell of a loophole, and he hadn’t known of it. It wasn’t like there was an annual demon spawn convention where they learned tricks of the trade. For the most part, out in “the wild” they all avoided each other and stayed the hell out of each other’s territories. It should have been information passed on from father to son, but most demons didn’t have particularly compassionate relationships with their children.

It was John’s mother Darla who’d made the connection for him. Charles and Claude had met with Darla to plan ways to spirit her daughters out of the compound, and in her typically cheerful way, she’d dropped the bomb on him.
Oh, she’s been fine since the moment that baby rooted herself
, she’d said.
Did you forget? Gift a demon with a child and they can’t touch your soul
.

No, he hadn’t forgotten. He’d never
known
and neither had Claude. Oddly enough, Julia had known, but no one had thought to discuss it with her.

Pop drummed the end of his fork against the table and brought Charles’s attention back to the present. “Ross is currently occupied, picking up your slack and looking for those meddlesome Thomases. It’s mostly the husband I’m worried about. He knows too much. Anyhow, Ross would have certainly caught up to you by now if it weren’t for that. There’s a huge fucking bounty on the both of them. Gets larger every year.”

Charles ground his teeth and tried to keep his expression blank.

“He’s out turning over every rock in search of her and her husband, and I bet he’ll find them, too.”

“Is he a cambion or a bloodhound?”

Pop administered an icy glare and pulled the wine bottle closer. “I’ve ordered him to meet up with us tomorrow morning. Red and I are going to a show tonight, so enjoy your freedom while it lasts.” He pulled that ominous grin again. “It’s Vegas. Spend some money. Have a little fun before your new overseer cracks the whip on you. I gotta warn you that he’s
good
. Good as you used to be, without all the guilt issues. I suppose you got those from your mother.”

“Yes, I inherited a number of things from my mother, including an aggregated intolerance of
you
.”

The grin pulled in, and the demon dropped his voice to a threatening whisper. “Everyone told me I should have killed her sooner for what she did.”

“That’s a lot of ego, even coming from you. She gave you one child, and she loved me. And what did you do? You got pissed because she wanted a normal home life with a real husband. Was she the one who got away? The one who, despite your faulty memory, you’ll never forget?”

Arlene pushed her chair back, and stood. “I’m just going to go powder my nose. I don’t want to intrude.”

Pop swept a hand toward the restroom corridor. “Have at it.”

When she’d walked away, Charles leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms, studying his father. Not the father who’d raised him, but the one who’d provided the genetic material. The man his mother married was the one who kept Charles out of the gutter when he was slumming as a teenager. He was the one who saw him to Princeton and taught him to throw a damned good punch.

He was the one who told him that if Charles ever found a woman to love, then nothing he would do would ever be good enough, because that woman would be worth everything and more.

Well, now Charles had found
two
women to love. One probably wanted to tie him to a pillar and set fire to his feet. The other—his daughter, well, all he could hope was that she knew he was trying. He’d never had to try before.

So, he would let his son lead him around by a metaphorical leash for as long as it took if it meant his girls’ safety. He’d stay away for as long as he had to so Ross didn’t get close and didn’t bring Pop along for the ride.

Charles wanted to raise the white flag and have the other side give him sanctuary and solace, but he didn’t know how to do that without dragging along all his demonic baggage.

“If I had it all to do over again,” Pop said, “I would have stayed away from her. She was wonderful to look at, yes, but I had a rare moment of thoughtlessness. That’s a lesson you should learn and learn well. Fuck, they even teach it in the Bible. It’s in Genesis. The ultimate story of a woman who cost way more than she was worth.” He drained the remnants of his wine glass down his throat and refilled it. “Never consort with a woman who has her own power. You’ll never stop regretting it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Too late. Marion may not have had magic, but she had power, all right. He felt it every time she stood at a window, looking out at the world she couldn’t be in. He wanted to give it to her, but like all good things, it’d take some time.

• • •

Marion opened her eyes to find a pair of bright blue ones looking down on her, and though they were familiar eyes—the same ones Charles, Claude, and John had—the person possessing them happened to be female.

Marion moved to the center of the bed, being careful not to jostle the snoozing Ariel, and let her forehead furrow at the unexpected guest. “Who the hell are you?”

“Julia. One of John’s full sisters. Spawn o’ Gulielmus.” She rolled her eyes.

Huh. Marion nodded. She knew that name, Julia. She was the one married to the werewolf. The family resemblance was certainly there, but was this what succubi looked like? Succubi apparently wore baggy Snoopy nightshirts. “Nice to meet you. What are you doing in my sister’s bedroom in the middle of the night?”

“I pop in when I’m lonely. My husband is on the road and I get … scared when I’m alone.” She climbed into the vacant space in the bed beside Marion and cuddled up next to her. “You’re warm.”

“Um …”

Julia’s arm draped over Marion’s belly, and then she sat up and squealed. “The baby! I forgot. Aww.”

Ariel sat up, shrieking, and grabbed her knife from the bedside table. She brandished it at nothing in particular until her stare landed on the newcomer.

Julia was perfectly calm, and had just rolled onto her side and leaned her head against her propped fist. “Hi, Ariel.”

“Oh,” Ariel said. She sighed and replaced the knife on the nightstand. She snuggled under the covers once more. “’Night.”

Marion looked from her slumbering sister to the demoness in the suddenly crowded bed.

“Can you believe Cupid’s gonna be a daddy?” Ariel asked with a tired chuckle.

Cupid?

Julia’s bright eyes rolled upward and she worked her lips as if she were counting in her head. “That’ll make me half-auntie.” Her smile broadened and her bright eyes went a bit rounder.

“Don’t try to do redneck demon family tree math. It’s too late for that,” Ariel muttered.

Julia made that squealing noise once more—which seemed out of place coming from a woman with such a seductive voice—and reached over to pat Marion’s belly. “My very first one.”

“Julia?” Marion said by way of nudging.

Her pale eyebrows darted up. “Hmm?”

“What if it had been John in here and not me and those two were …” Marion wriggled her brows suggestively.

Julia blew a raspberry. “Oh. We have a system. I never come before three.”

Ariel sighed.

“Has Gulielmus come by?” Julia asked.

“No,” Ariel said tiredly. “One of the companies he owns hires my advertising agency to brand its beer, and he was in the building last week, but between Agatha and Mark, I had a buffer.”

Marion sat up again. “Wait. You got within throwing distance of an entity who could kill you without touching you, and you’re not in the slightest bit aggrieved about it?”

“I’m plenty aggrieved, but after a while, you just go with the flow. He wants to kill me, but it’d be too much work for him. Contrary to what you might think, he doesn’t actually seem to like getting his hands dirty, and he doesn’t outsource the particularly personal stuff. I think he keeps a lot of secrets for a demon.”

“Hmm. I wouldn’t mind having an angel. Where can I sign up for one of those?”

Julia raised one hand in the air and grinned.

Ariel groaned into her pillow.

“What?” Marion asked.

“I can’t be your bodyguard the way Mark is for Ariel, but in case you’ve forgotten, just like John, I do have a bit of angel in me. In fact, I have one particular ability he does
not
have.”

“What?”

“I can shield myself from public observation.”

“What the hell does that even mean?”

“It means she can stand in a crowd and people will just walk past her as if she weren’t there. If she tries really hard, she can extend the shield to the people around her.”

“Huh.”

“That’s how angels walk amongst us without most people noticing them.”

Marion turned to Julia. “And from whom do you get that rare gift?”
Please don’t say Gulielmus
. The prospect that the man could be standing right in front of her and she’d ignore him as if he were a pay phone or a parking meter made her stomach lurch more than it already did lately.