Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (91 page)

“Wait,” Gail said. “You’re telling me that Shaun intentionally summons demons?”

“Yes, and the not-so-lustful sort at that. Don’t get me wrong, incubi are plenty dangerous, but we’re not inherently violent. We don’t have to be. My guess would be the first time Shaun tried to summon one, he didn’t get a demon, but something close enough that was nearby—Ross. Ross is attracted to the idea of power, and he likely answered the call because he wanted to see what Shaun could do for him.”

“I’d bet money that Shaun leveraged Ross to the demonic bozos, and they saw him as a means to get to me,” Papa said.

“Why would anyone there be out to get you?” John asked. “Last we heard, you were their star employee. Certainly, a demon not trying hard enough to get his kids in check isn’t a compelling enough reason to strip him of his power after so many eons.”

Pap
a’s
shoulders shook and face reddened as he howled his laughter. “No one expects cambions to play by the rules, much less their father. Jason was right. I always have ulterior motives. The problem isn’t you kids step out of line and that I don’t care enough anymore to do anything about it. The problem is that they’re scared of your power and that you’ve all banded together and built on it. As if I’d be apologetic about that. They’re all jealous that I played the game the best and that it’ll be my sons giving them shit.” He laced his fingers behind his head and grinned.

“Gods, they say I’m deranged, but you are one sick, twisted egomaniac,” Agatha said, and she finally dropped Gail’s braid, but only to put her hands on her hips.

“Oh, please. Go on and pretend you’re not proud that Gail and Ellery are beautiful and have good brains in their heads. Go on, so I can call you a liar.”

Agatha scrunched her nose as if she smelled something rotten, but didn’t refute the assertion.

“Unfortunately, this means that like Agatha, my allegiances have shifted somewhat. It’s open season on the demon Gulielmus, and I suspect some incorporeal asshole is itching to step into my expensive shoes.”

Gail blew a raspberry. “Hold up. I’m feeling pretty stupid right now, so excuse me if I rehash this until it makes sense.” She counted off on her fingers. “Shaun, power-hungry twat that he is, got his hands on some charms capable of summoning demons. He tried to summon one, and instead he got Ross. He and Ross teamed up, and decided to work together on a plan to target a bigger fish. They snagged one by selling y’all out, and that demon negotiated a power trade with your bosses that would screw you over and help Ross?”

“Go on,” Gulielmus said, making a rolling gesture with his hand.

“Okay, the demon doesn’t have a body anymore, but he gets yours if he and his dodo bird minions successfully douse you and the cambion power cartel?”

Papa shrugged. “Sounds about right in broad strokes.”

“If he had those things in the car all this time, then that means …”

Claude took the place behind her chair where Agatha had been and squeezed her shoulders. “Don’t think about it. He likely had stashes of them all over the place, and those were the last of them. That’s why he wanted the car back.”

“So, what’s the plan?” Clarissa asked. “It seems like the safest thing to do would be to crack the spells around this place and lure them in. We don’t want them around other people, and if we deal with them here, no one will be able to track them.”

“I agree,” Papa said, and then he scanned as much of the room as he could see without turning his head. “
Who can hear me?
”

Claude, John, and Mark checked in while the others in the room continued hashing out possible plans.

Charles, under pretense of getting a cup of coffee, moved away from Marion, and checked in, too. She could only hear him talking mind to mind if he were close, and he must have suspected—as Claude did—that whatever Gulielmus was about to propose wasn’t something he wanted her volunteering for.

“
Can Agatha not hear me?
” Papa asked.

“
She’s not telepathic
,” Mark said. “
I’ll pass on whatever you need her to know before I go.
”

“
Where are you going?
” John asked.

“
I …
” He pushed his glasses up and fixed his stare on Clarissa, who was talking to Gail at the moment. “
I’m sorry, I can’t be here. I’m worried that Sweetie isn’t okay.
I need to go keep an eye on her.
”

“
Fine
,” Papa said, and rolled his eyes. He’d never had much patience for sentimentality. “
I’d like you to be discreet about this. We need to handle this urgently. I can’t predict what power I’ll have left by the time Shaun and Ross do show up here, and we don’t know what they’re capable of. I need to be able to put Ross down, and the longer we wait, the probability of failure increases exponentially. Give the women your credit cards and let them go shopping or something, anything to clear them out of here for a while.
”

Charles barely stifled his scoff.

“You okay, baby?” Marion asked.

“Oh, yeah. Don’t mind me. The coffee’s a bit stronger than usual, is all.”

She returned to her discussion with the ladies.

“
Just do what you can,
” Papa said. “
We’ve got the four of us plus Agatha.
”

“
And Gail?
” Claude asked. He already knew the answer. She had to be there, because this was her fight as much as it was theirs. After what Shaun had done to her, she wouldn’t just roll over and let them do the heavy lifting.

“
And Gail
,” Papa said.

“
But after what happened with Shaun earlier, I worry she’s going to clam up before she finds her footing.
”

“
Get her angry,”
John said.

“
Good idea. When she’s angry, that wild magic spikes. It’ll help her do what she does best. Her reactions are good when she’s pressed, but she doesn’t trust herself.
”

Charles mentally sighed. “
I’d just like to say that I feel like this is at least half my fault, and I’m sorry for it. I should have dealt with Ross last year
.”

“
Don’t sweat it
,” Claude said. “
This way we can deal with two shit stains at once.”

“
You know
,” Papa interjected. “
With
Shaun’s demon being incorporeal, he probably won’t be able to resist the prospect of a good meal because the more energy he has, the easier it is for him to travel in this realm without Shaun’s aid. We could lure him, and thus Shaun, with a big enough power display. Between Agatha and me, we can probably put off enough power to raise the hairs on the necks of demons in a two-hundred-mile radius. Claude can take down some of the protective wards around this place, and they’ll just assume that my and Agatha’s fighting would be enough to weaken them. They’re not smart enough to be suspicious—especially since Agatha renounced her neutral status—and once they’re here, they’ll be raring for a fight.
”

“
Great. When do we start?
” Claude twined the end of Gail’s braid around his fingers, and she looked up at him, grinning.

She was comfortable and happy sitting there in that safe place with all those powerful beings around her, and he was about to rock her world yet again with what they had planned.

He grinned back, and she mouthed, “Love you.”

Shit.

He kissed the top of her head. He’d been waiting so many decades to hear that.

Suddenly, he wanted to do the cowardly thing and not tell her. She’d be angry at him for the surprise, but he’d prefer to seek forgiveness than ask for permission on this matter. He needed her to fight wild and to not overanalyze. She needed both her smarts
and
emotion to do what needed to be done.
She
needed to deal with Shaun. Prophesies weren’t clear things, but it made sense to him now that he had to choose let her fight instead of hiding her away. She was the thing he loved most, and he was risking her safety. She’d be safe if she did nothing, but if she did nothing, she’d never learn how strong a witch she was.

Papa’s words floated into his mind in a surprisingly gentle tone. “
Mark, take Agatha into another room and fill her in. Charles, take Marion home and make sure she stays there. Take Ellery, too. John, tell whatever lies you must to keep Ariel at work until she’s called home
.”

“
What about Clarissa
?” John asked.

Papa tuned back into the spoken conversation around him, listening for a while and watching Clarissa pace.

“
I’ll deal with her.
”

“This isn’t the best time for this,” Gail pleaded. She pulled Agatha by the shirttails, though it was no use. How could she possibly think she could restrain the wind?

Agatha stomped through the meadow and pointed back to the group of men behind them. “Now’s the perfect time. We’re busy people, so let’s go ahead and get the tussle out of the way. He’s been angling for a fight for millennia, and he’s finally going to get one.”

“This is petty.”

“Yep.” Agatha rolled up her sleeves and made a
come on
gesture to the approaching Gulielmus.

Claude, Charles, and John followed on his heels, talking all at once and looking more frightened than Gail had ever seen them.

That worried her. If three of the most powerful beings she’d ever met were afraid of a one-on-one brawl between two ancient idiots, then shit was really about to go down. They’d probably open up a crater in the earth unlike anything ever seen before in eastern North Carolina.

Gulielmus grinned and slipped off his designer suit coat. He held it out for a confused John, who took it and eyed his brothers as if for instruction.

Charles rolled his eyes. “Just drop it.”

John did.

“Don’t get cocky, old man,” Agatha said. Her skin took on a stunning pallor all of a sudden, but the longer Gail watched, the clearer it seemed that she didn’t really have skin at all. Agatha wasn’t bound with the same stuff human beings were. Where they were mostly water, she was mostly air. She could probably fade to nothingness right before their eyes only to put herself into a strategic position for a blow that could end the fight before it started.

She popped her pearl earrings off, tucked them into the pockets of her chinos, and turned her rings around so the stones faced her palms.

Gulielmus scoffed. “I’m running at about five percent of my usual capacity, and I could still take you without breaking a sweat.”

“You never were one for messing up your hair, were you, pretty boy? How do women put up with your bullshit?”

Gulielmus dropped his chin to his chest and just stared.

Yeah, he didn’t really need to answer that, because everyone already knew. He was gorgeous, rich, huge, and he didn’t actually
need
a woman to put up with him for longer than an hour or two.

Agatha clucked her tongue. “Must be a lonely life, Bill. Being around people all the time, yet not connecting with any of them.”

“Sounds like someone else I know.” His eyes narrowed and one corner of his lips pulled up.

She bobbed her shoulders in an elegant shrug that looked like Fosse choreography. “The difference between you and me is that in all those years, I
wanted
to connect. Loving people and wanting to be loved back aren’t signs of weakness, contrary to what the assholes in my pantheon thought.”

“I never said they were.”

Gail startled at his frank words and leaned sideways to see Claude.

He raised his eyebrows and mouthed, “He was an angel, remember?”

It was certainly easy to forget.

“So, we’re agreed on one thing,” Agatha said. “Well, let’s get this over with, shall we? I have a four o’clock conference call with your marketing manager and brewmaster about that new beer. Are you sitting in on it?”

Gulielmus grunted. “No. I’ve got to go to Germany and see about some hops.”

What the hell?

The two lunged into fighting crouches, power radiating off both. Agatha’s silver hair flapped around her face, moved by a wind of her own waking.

The ground darkened with shadow as Gulielmus’s already-large form grew taller, broader, scarier. Although they could not be seen in the daylight, what had to be a massive pair of wings added ten feet of bulk to his shadow. His grin was predatory, though his posture perfectly relaxed. He looked like he had throw-downs like this every day.

Hell. Maybe he
did
.

Claude pulled Gail back by the waist, getting her out of what he must have thought was the splash zone for stray blood and guts. Propping his chin onto her shoulder, he whispered, “
Chéri
, whatever happens, don’t run. Stand your ground. You’re stronger than ever. And remember …” He lifted his head and brushed a gentle kiss along her jawline. “I love you more than life.”

“And I never get tired of hearing it because I love you too.”

He squeezed her and kissed her again, this time on the side of her mouth.

She grabbed what she could of him, keeping one eye on the feinting demon and goddess, and hugged him back. “But why so morbid? Everything’s going to be fine. This can’t be much more than a play fight. Ellery and I had these all the time as kids. We usually stopped at the first bruise.”

He turned her, completely careless to the commotion in front of them, and pressed a palm to either side of her face. He locked his gaze on hers, and it was lusty and affectionate, but frightened.

Before she could ask him the cause of his conflicting emotions, he kissed her the way men who are going off to unwinnable wars kissed their women.

He kissed her like he was never going to see her again.

“Claude?” she whispered against his lips, and there was a bright flash, a pop, and a chorus of groans.

Claude closed his eyes, held her tighter, and whispered, “
Merde
. Already,” before letting her go. “Remember what I told you,” he said, before his irises bled to red and he turned and hurled a surge of power at the brown-haired stranger who’d appeared in their midst. People kept saying his power was a frightening thing, but now she saw it with her own eyes. It radiated off him like heat off an asphalt road and sent the other man’s body sailing backward a good twenty feet.