Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (53 page)

“No. We just found out today. Your parents are coming home. It’s one of the things Claude, John, and I have been working on since last year. I’m going to rendezvous with Julia and John. We’re going to go meet them and get them here discreetly. If they get teleported in, they won’t leave a trail to follow. Like you, they won’t be able to leave the property for the time being, but no one but us will know they’re here.”

Marion hadn’t thrown up in months, but suddenly, a feeling of queasiness rolled over her in waves.

Her parents? What would they think of her? Would they judge her?

“Sweetheart, maybe you should lie down. You look pale.” He pressed his warm hand against her forehead, and added to her dizziness. His touch shouldn’t have felt like such a taboo, and maybe it always would.

“Oh my God.”

Did they know she was pregnant? By a
cambion
?

“They’re going to kill you,” she said in a squeak. She didn’t even know them, but that seemed the obvious course of action.

She raked his hair back from his eyes with shaking hands he took hold of and pressed against his lips.

“I probably deserve it, sweetheart.”

Sylvester Thomas held both of his daughters in what seemed to be a spine-crushing embrace, judging by the wheezing sounds escaping from the women’s chests. He rocked them a bit side to side, murmuring something to them in a language Charles couldn’t parse. Russian? No. Not quite that.

Marion seemed to be enduring the hug more than enjoying it, judging by her pinched expression and wide eyes. She held her arms tight against her sides and let herself be swayed.

Her gaze tracked over to Charles, and there was a plea in it.
Help me
, it said.

How could he? He was in enough hot water with the newcomers as it was. He gave her a grin he hoped looked sufficiently contrite. The one thing she’d really wanted to be rescued from in all these months wasn’t monsters, but a
hug
, and Charles had to refuse her. Maybe they could laugh about it later.

“I’m so happy you’re hearty and hale,” Sylvester said, letting go of the girls.

Ariel drew in a breath and straightened the now rumpled dress she’d worn to work. “A little less hale after that hug. Jesus Christ, Daddy.”

“I’m so pleased you’d call me Daddy after all these years.”

“You’re pretty hard to forget.” Her gaze tracked over his stocky frame.

He was average height, but powerfully built. He’d kept in shape while on the road. He’d probably had to.

“I didn’t get the luxury of having anything to remember,” Marion said in a voice so soft, Charles wasn’t certain she’d meant for anyone to hear it.

Clarissa had. She pressed her palm against her overwhelmed granddaughter’s back and rubbed, saying nothing.

John eased in closer to Charles and murmured, “Still waiting for the fallout.”

“It’s coming. He’s already insinuated that he’d make sure I’d never impregnate anyone ever again.”

“Want to teleport out of here?”

“I don’t think that would leave a good taste in their mouths, or the girls’.”

As if on cue, Lottie Thomas positioned herself in front of them and looked from John to Charles. Her dark eyes were piercing, her stare emasculating. She was teeny-tiny, not much more than five feet tall, but both John and Charles took a reflexive step backward.

She hadn’t said a word to them since they’d escorted the Thomases to the house, but now she seemed to have hundreds of them on her tongue. Not a one of them was likely to be positive.

“You look just like your father,” she said to John in a soft, modulated voice.

“You’ve met him?”

“No. But I make it my business to know him if I saw him. He’s got a reputation.” She swiveled slowly toward Charles. “I heard he has more than a hundred children. How many do you have besides the one you put in my daughter?”

Clarissa slipped in between Lottie and the boys and put up her hands. “Don’t do that. They get enough of it from me. Besides, who are you to criticize whom the girls ended up with, given your own circumstances?”

Charles wanted to know more about those circumstances, but wouldn’t dare say so. Not when Lottie’s attention was on Clarissa at the moment and not him.

“Don’t rock the boat, Lottie. Sylvester, you hear me?”

Sylvester looked up from yet another crushing hug and blinked at Clarissa. “I have no idea what you mean. I’ll be civil.”

“I need you to be more than civil. This has been my show for the past twenty-five years and I’ll run it as I see fit. These boys are in my house on my say-so. Don’t go harassing them.”

“Or else what?” Lottie asked, voice still in that modulated wisp. It was almost sing-song.

Charles didn’t know who was scarier—Sylvester with his knives strapped to his boots or his little wife in the pink cardigan who never raised her voice. She’d probably kill him while wearing a smile.

“I hate to say it, Lottie, but if y’all can’t get along, you and Syl will have to go. You’re going to have to trust me.”

“I do trust you, Mother, I just … didn’t expect this. When we met them at the rendezvous point, we hardly expected demons to be our escorts. The messenger didn’t tell us who they’d be.”

Marion stepped across the braided area rug, hands resting atop her belly, and didn’t seem to know where to stand. She looked from her mother, to Clarissa, to Charles, anxiety marked by her red cheeks and wide eyes, and finally moved to Charles’s side.

He lifted his arm to wrap around her, but dropped it just in time.

She looked up at him, and the question was clear in her expression.
What am I supposed to do?

He wished he could answer that, but he didn’t know. What was she supposed to feel for parents she’d never known? Should she try to squeeze out a few joyous tears or something, or was it okay to be a little numb?

“Tired?” he asked her.

She nodded.

“Why don’t you go on upstairs? You’ve been up so long. I’m surprised you haven’t crashed already.”

“Yeah.” She nodded again and shifted her weight from one hip to the other. “Are you … coming up?”

He looked at Sylvester, whose green eyes were narrowed into slits. Lottie wore her same unreadable expression. Clarissa gave her head a minute bob toward the hall and stairs, granting her permission, though Charles knew it came with an unspoken warning:
Don’t be stupid.

Marion’s trust for him was tentative, and he knew that. She’d spoken with Julia and Mrs. Tate, and both confirmed what Charles had said. She knew they had no reason to lie, especially not Julia, who cared so much for her extended family. He needed to ease Marion into this thing. They’d gone nearly a year without intimacy, so he couldn’t just assume she’d be ready to go at it again just like that.

They had time. A
lot
of time, if Claude got the information he needed from Charles’s mother.

He groaned at the thought. Why had he agreed to that spectacle? He said okay, and they were going to bring her spirit through when conditions were right. He was already bracing himself for her disappointment.

“Claude should be back with dinner in about an hour,” Clarissa said. “I’ll call y’all down.”

He followed Marion up the stairs and into her room and closed the door behind him.

She sat on the bed’s edge, wringing her hands and staring at the floor.

“Too much at once?” he asked. He pulled the armchair by the dresser closer to the bedside and sat.

He wanted to take her shaking hands in his and squeeze them, rub them until she was calm, and if he’d had to do this whole thing over again, he’d make it so he could do it. He wouldn’t wait so long to explain things to her. He wouldn’t hold out on her.

“Yes. You know, nine months ago I was trying to figure out where I wanted to put down roots so I could have a home base. You know, some normalcy. I wanted to find some place to raise the kids I’d have with the husband I hadn’t found yet. I imagined it’d be this wonderful thing, because growing up, I didn’t have family.”

“It was just me and my mother until I was around twelve, and then she got married, but at least I had her.” He’d craved that nuclear family as child, too, but now as a grown man, he knew with some parents, it was better for them to not be in the picture. He wasn’t sure that scenario applied to Marion and Ariel, however.

“Every day since I’ve come here, I’ve wondered if I’m fit to be around people.”

“Of course you are. Everyone loves you.”

“Shush. I feel like I’m in a glass terrarium and everyone’s watching me.”

“If they’re watching, it’s because you’re beautiful.”

“You’re full of shit, Charles.” She sighed and rubbed her tired eyes.

“I mean it. I’m lucky to have you as my very significant other.”

“Whatever that means, right?”

“We’ll play it by ear, just like we have been.”

She pulled her legs up onto the bed and wriggled down to put her head on her pillow. “You going to be around more? I’m going to have this baby any day, I mean. You should probably be close, just in case.”

What was that about? She should have known better than that by now.

“Just for the baby?”

She didn’t answer. She just closed her eyes and sighed again.

But that was okay.

• • •

Marion watched the red digits on the nightstand clock creep ever closer to dawn. Some people counted sheep. She watched digital clock numbers.

She hadn’t been so restless since that major progesterone surge in the first trimester that had her pacing the floors of the small house to combat her insomnia and psychedelic dreams. Now it wasn’t unfettered hormones keeping her awake, but her daughter’s insistent head-butting of her maternal bladder and one of her precious little baby knees wedged beneath Marion’s ribs.

It didn’t matter how Marion rolled; there was no comfortable position to be in. The last couple of times she’d slept upright, she’d ended up falling over and waking just in time to slap down her hands and prevent her head’s collision with some protruding furniture edge.

Charles, on the other side of the full-length foam body pillow, shifted, turning toward the curtained window.

She listened to his breaths, and found them shallow. Not relaxed.

“Are you asleep?” she whispered.

“No.”

“Is all my rolling around keeping you up?”

“No, I’m not that light a sleeper. I’ve slept through bombs.”

Marion pushed up onto her right elbow and nudged the bottom of her right ribs, hoping the girl would shift toward center. “Do demons actually need to sleep?”

A long silence stretched between them, and briefly, Marion worried that her question was offensive. It’d been genuine curiosity, but she could see how a person would take it otherwise.

“Demons?” he murmured. “No. Demonic offspring? Depends.”

“What on?”

“What they’re mixed with.”

“How human they are, you mean.”

Another long pause, and then he grunted acquiescence. “I guess we’re going to go there, huh?”

“We’re past due, don’t you think?”

“Quite. What do you want to know?”

“Did you always know? What you are, I mean.”

“No.”

“How did you find out?”

He rolled onto his back and scooted up so his spine pressed against the headboard. “I don’t want to dump things on you too fast.”

“Too late for that.” She pointed to her belly.

“That’s fair.” He rubbed his eyes and blew out a sigh. “I had a normal childhood. Normal enough, I guess. I didn’t know anything was unusual about me or my mother while growing up. It was just the two of us until she married my stepfather, and I never thought to ask where my father was or why my grandparents weren’t around. My mother was just …
everything
. I never felt like I was missing out on the nuclear family.”

Well, that made
one
of them.

“From what I know about your father, I’m surprised he left her alone. He seems the territorial type.”

“He didn’t leave her alone. Yes, she refused him after I was born, but he didn’t really go away. Not completely. He antagonized her a lot. I didn’t know it at the time. Didn’t know it until after he claimed me and brought my mark online.” He held up his left palm and the archaic symbol etched into flesh glowed blue.

“I know she’s not around, but aren’t demigoddesses supposed to be immortal?”

“Immortal meaning hard to kill? Yes. She’s dead. She was killed a hundred years ago.”

Killed? She put a hand to her belly as a painful Braxton Hicks contraction clenched her core.
Oh God.
Snuffing out a demigoddess couldn’t have been an easy thing, right? So what chance did Marion have? Shit. She’d never leave the property ever again.

Don’t dwell on that. Change the subject.

“She was fine with you getting marked?”

“No. She didn’t know until it was too late.” He reached across the body pillow between them and tenderly smoothed the hair at her forehead. “I was on campus at the time at Princeton and he found me in the library. He didn’t have to say a word, but I knew who he was. We’re just …
wired
to know him when he finally comes around. Naturally, I told him to fuck off.”

She laughed and clapped a hand over her mouth, lest she wake her parents across the hall. Wouldn’t do to have her father running in wearing that white tank top with his hair standing on end, and pointing his big shotgun at her mostly harmless demonic baby-daddy.

Not that it would hurt Charles. At least, not permanently. She giggled at the thought of Charles picking buckshot out of his flesh.

She cut her gaze to the right and found Charles’s bright blue eyes narrowed in amusement at her. She was glad they’d lightened the mood.

“Sorry. Uh … you ended up going with him. Gulielmus, I mean.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

He raised his right shoulder and let it fall. “I guess I felt betrayed. He told me what my mother was and … how much do you know about mythology?”

“More and more each day, living with you all, but probably not enough. I probably skipped a few too many classes in high school.”