Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (56 page)

“Why would I argue with her?”

“The dead don’t lie. No matter how much she loves you, she’s not going to sugarcoat the truth. She’ll tell you the truth you need to hear, so if you don’t want to hear the answer, don’t ask the question. Let me get the pleasantries out of the way first, huh? Let me get the information I need.”

Why did Claude feel the need to make this disclaimer now, of all times? Charles shifted week-old Ruby to his other arm and pulled the front of his light jacket around her. She stirred a little, but didn’t wake. He nodded. “Fine.”

Claude’s expression seemed indicative of disbelief, but all the same, he blew out a breath, closed his eyes, and hung his head. He whispered something, repeated it again and again in a tongue Charles didn’t recognize, and when he stopped chanting, there was a snap in the air. He felt as though tiny pinpricks of lightning hit all of his skin at once.

Ruby didn’t seem affected, but Claude evidently felt it, too, judging by the way he rolled his head side to side and cringed. After all, the magic originated from him.

Suddenly, the prickling stopped, and Claude sucked in a breath. He opened his eyes, which were blue again, and blinked several times.

Charles waited for something to happen.
Anything
.

He’d never seen his brother perform this particular ritual and didn’t know what to expect. Was this it?

A light touch grazed the back of Charles’s shoulders, and Charles startled a bit, not having heard anyone walk up. He’d expected to catch Julia or perhaps John in his periphery, but no.

There was his pretty mother, phosphorescent in form, stepping around him and staring at his baby with wonderment.

She was there, but wasn’t.

Smelled like her. He caught the scent of the flowers she’d loved so much in life. Looked like her, but instead of the early twentieth-century garb he’d last seen her in, she was dressed in a loose-fitting robe that skimmed her bare feet. Her dark hair fell over her translucent shoulders in waves.

How had he never noticed as a young man that his mother never really aged? It was obvious now. Now that he knew what she must have done to fool people. All that makeup she’d worn … that matronly hairstyle she’d had.

“What color are her eyes?” she asked in a voice that seemed far away, like they were talking via a bad phone connection.

“Her eyes? Well, right now they’re no color at all. Like a bunch of paint colors mixed together.”

“Brown,” she said, smiling, and she stoked the top of Ruby’s fuzzy’s head. Ruby seemed to automatically stretch toward her hand as if she intrinsically knew this energy belonged to someone who cared about her. “They’ll be brown.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Irene,” Claude said. “But I need to ask you something important before our host comes out to greet you. She has some questions for you about demons.”

“What’s your question, Claude?”

“What is required to link an mortal’s life to that of her immortal mate?”

She turned slowly toward Claude and nodded. “Will.”

“I’m sorry?”

“
Will
. It’s a powerful kind of magic of its own. There’s no spell required. No ceremony required. It’s a mutual decision made very intentionally.” She turned back to Charles and looked up at him. “You’ll know if it’s possible. You’ll feel it.”

“That’s all? Really?” Claude said, not bothering to disguise his incredulity.

“That’s all.”

When Charles put his hand beneath Ruby’s rump where it had been before, she gave him that bemused look again.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“She … she isn’t my first one.”

There. He’d admitted it. Now she’d know he’d fucked up, and she’d probably leave and never come back again. And he’d deserve it.

“You think I don’t know? That I don’t watch you when I can?” This time when she reached a hand in close, it was his hair she nudged back, out of his eyes so she could look right into them with her dark ones.

“I know about Ross. I know what he is because I watch over him too. Maybe even more than I watch you.”

“I never knew about him, and even if I had—”

She slashed the air with her hand, cutting him off, but her eyes weren’t on him. She looked past him, fixed in such a way that made him turn around.

He expected to find John this time, but instead, there was a quavering Marion, agape, looking from the very still Claude to Mother to Charles, and back to Mother again. Clarissa, beside her, was nonplussed, as if she’d seen this particular miracle performed before.

Clarissa, they’d expected. They’d invited her, after all. She’d been told to wait until five after the hour to come out. Charles did
not
expect her to bring accompaniment. What had Clarissa been thinking bringing Marion along? She was supposed to have been in bed as she’d been up all night nursing.

When Marion seemed to have processed the congregation the best she could, she asked, “Who is Ross?”

Mother’s fingers tickled Charles’s chest as she reached under Ruby, trying to grasp her. She looked to Claude, pleading with her eyes.

His body shook and sweat beaded on his brow, but he nodded. “Just for a minute, Irene.”

Slowly, carefully, Mother took Ruby, and sank slowly to the ground on her phosphorescent rear end cradling the baby and cooing at her in what sounded like Greek.

Charles would probably never see such a sight again, and he wanted to take it in, relish it, so one day he could tell Ruby all about it, but then Marion came closer.

She looked at Mother and Ruby a moment, seeming to assess them, but then locked her gaze on Charles. “Who is Ross?” she repeated.

Charles looked to his big brother for guidance, but Claude had his eyes closed, and rocked on his heels, chanting quietly to himself. Charles was on his own.

“You’ve met him, although briefly. Ross is my son. He’s an incubus. A dangerous one.”

“You abandoned him?”

“He’s older than Clarissa, sweetheart.”

She shook her head. “You
abandoned
him?”

He opened his mouth to tell her that he didn’t know about him until recently, but even when he had found out, he hadn’t been in a big hurry to seek him out. Hell, Ross had known about him and had willfully avoided him the same way. As far as Ross was concerned, Charles was just a contributor of genetic material—the same way Charles felt about Pop. He wasn’t a
father
, for fuck’s sake.

But now, he could see how that thought would frighten Marion. She’d think he’d abandon Ruby the same way. But, he couldn’t.

“I was no father to him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“And he’s dangerous? He’s one of the people I have to watch out for? Will he hurt Ruby?” She took motivated steps toward Mother, but Mother held up one hand, and Clarissa held Marion back by the elbow.

“Please let me hold her while I can,” Mother said. “The veil will rarely be so thin that I can be pulled through such as now. Even now it’s difficult.” She indicated Claude, who now had squatted and pressed his head between his knees as if he felt the need to vomit.

Marion brushed her grandmother’s hand down gently and turned to Charles. “Well, will he, Charles? Is that the thing you’ve been keeping from me? You said it would make sense later. That doesn’t make sense!”

“Marion, he would take her if he could. Right now, we’re hiding him. Keeping him away from Pop so he doesn’t share what he knows.”

“Ross is …
different
,” Mother said, and she’d leaned forward for a better view of Marion.

Ruby had opened her eyes and now had the fingers of her little hand wrapped around Mother’s index finger.

“He’s harder to hold captive. The tricks you use to keep Gulielmus out won’t necessarily keep Ross out, because in spite of the way he behaves, Ross is mostly human.”

“He’s an animal,” Claude growled out, and he lifted his head as if it were a two-ton brick. His eyes were glazed, glowing red again.

“He’s your nephew,” Mother said.

“And I should have killed him the first time I encountered him.”

Marion gasped and spun toward Claude. “You’d kill your own flesh and blood? Just like that? I can’t believe I trusted you, too.”

With what seemed like great effort, Claude nodded. “You don’t mean that. You know better. Your gut’s better than that, so stop discounting what it’s telling you. He’s bad,
cheri
. He doesn’t fight it. He likes what he is, and he’ll kill you and laugh about it. I see
Papa
in him. He’s cold. Has no conscience.”

“And how many souls have you hand-delivered to Hell, huh? Your conscience is so clean that you can be so cavalier? You’d kill Ruby, too, I bet.”

Claude snorted, and Mother flickered.

“Hold it together!” she said in a desperate voice.

Mother inclined her head toward Marion. “I’m sorry you got dragged into this, but I’m sure Charles has already told you. You’re his. He’s yours. You’re a match designed from the time you were conceived, Marion. I’m sorry for who his father is. I really am, but I love my son just like you love your daughter, even though you’re so scared she might go bad. You love her in spite of it, just like I love Charles and I love Ross, too.”

“You love everyone,” Charles whispered.

She laughed. “Almost everyone. Changed my mind about that one particular fool the day he kindly directed me to the Elysian Fields.”

“You think that’s funny?”

“I knew the rules, Charles. It was different for me than with the others. The
deal
was different. I was only safe for as long as I didn’t refuse him. I didn’t love him, not the way he wanted, so I refused him after that first time. He waited until you were grown to follow through on that threat, through. He’s really good at psychological terrorism.” She laughed again, and this time when she flickered, her eyes widened and Claude forced himself to stand. He extended his arms and took Ruby from the disappearing visitor.

Charles looked at Marion, and found the color in her face had fled.

He wrapped his arms around whatever he could grab of his mother.

She nuzzled his cheek, kissed him on the forehead, and said to Marion, “Trust him, Marion. We all make mistakes. I made my share. You can keep him good.”

And then she was gone.

Marion’s pallid face bore a startled expression as Claude’s labored breathing filled the air.

Charles stepped between Marion and Claude, looked from one to the other, and settled Ruby into her mother’s arms.

Claude said, “
Cheri
, I know you ain’t got no reason to believe us, but think on this. You’re not the only one who’s had it rough. I had a true love, too, and
Papa
killed her in her fucking sleep when I stopped doing my job. Nothing is black and white. You don’t know all the history, so before you judge us, think about what was going through our heads when we made the decisions we did. We needed rescuing, too, and maybe we’re not all there yet.”

He ambled shakily toward the main house.

Marion wouldn’t meet Charles’s gaze. She looked at Ruby, then at the spot of grass where Mother had been, and then tears tracked down her cheeks.

He’d never seen her cry, and seeing it now broke his heart. Was there an easier way to introduce her to this chaos that was his life? He wished there were, but he’d committed a lot of sins in a hundred and twenty-four years, and was ashamed of every one of them. The Fates said she was stuck with him anyway. Sometimes he regretted that for her.

She turned, and saying nothing, walked toward her little house, shoulders quaking from her sobs.

Clarissa’s brief shake of her head confirmed what Charles already knew. Marion wouldn’t want to talk, so for now, he let her go.

Charles had ignored enough of Pop’s summonses in the past several weeks that he could feel the demon’s anger. Generally, that erratic telepathic link between demon father and cambion son was cut off. They both had their own mental shields they kept up to block the other from their thoughts, but this time, Pop was so angry he didn’t even
try
to conceal it.

Well, Charles was plenty angry himself. So angry, in fact, that he was in just the kind of mood to have that long-awaited clash with his father.

What was Pop going to do? Kill him? Well, if that was his plan, he’d have to work hard at it. While in the past, Charles may have sought the easy way out—death by whosoever’s hands would gift him with it—now, there were people depending on him. Real people, including one tiny one with a heartrending cry, and no teeth. If he went, sure, Marion and Ruby would be taken care of. They’d have his money, his assets, but they wouldn’t have
him
. He understood fully now why his mother had said
no
to Pop that second time. Although she loved her son, she hadn’t loved his father. Like Charles, she was a purveyor of true love—requited love—and when she found it for herself, nothing would keep her from it. Not even an incubus with an ego the size of a planet.

That incubus wasn’t going to keep Charles from love, either. He may have been conceived to shun such human trappings, but his mother’s will was obviously stronger than his father’s. Maybe it had taken a hundred years for the battle to come to a head, but finally, love won out.

Charles jammed his Bowie knife into the gut of the demon scout that had been tracking him all over Eastern North Carolina for the past week, and let it bleed out.

Charles eased back a bit and watched the ugly lizard-cat hybrid drain into the earth. He’d let the thing find him, and had led it in a circuitous maze for the past three days just to confuse and infuriate his father. He’d weaved in and out of places demons could not be—holy places—but for some reason Charles could, and finally led it to this swampy bit of woodland near the Croatan National Forest.

Pop materialized in front of him, his aura crackling red and face an angry, ugly mask.

He’d never seen his father so furious, and his features twisted and disfigured with his rage. “Where’s Ross?” he thundered.

Charles stabbed the knife into the soft Earth and brushed his hands clean on his blue jeans. He met his father’s angry blue stare with impunity. Maybe he couldn’t rid himself of everything that made him half-demon the way John had, but recently, something in him had broken for the better. Pop had chosen to go bad, so why couldn’t Charles do the opposite? He had his mother’s magic after all. Wasn’t that what had made his conscience so guilty for the past century? The two halves of him couldn’t form a complete whole because they didn’t fit together any better than Pop and Mother had. He was lust. She was love. They were two people battling the nature of the other, but Charles was one man carrying that raging war within.