Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series (55 page)

Calvin stepped up into the narrow room and scoffed. “Boy, you do realize people would hate you a little less if you weren’t such a sniveling pissant, right? Yeah, your Auntie Julia and I are going to take real good care of you. I’ve got a special little shed on my property all ready for you. It’s got a space heater and bucket for you to do your business in. If you’re a real good boy, maybe we’ll let you into the house for a proper shower.” Calvin’s eyes shifted to their wolfish gold and a low rumble emitted from his chest.

Ross flinched.

Ah.
It seemed he’d not only inherited his grandfather’s megalomania, but also his aversion to werewolves.

Charles moved to unfasten the chains, but Calvin held out his hand.

“Give me the key.”

Charles handed it over, and Calvin dropped it into his jeans pocket before picking Ross, chair and all, up by the seat and carrying him to the door.

“Gonna put him in the back of my SUV like this,” he said by way of explanation.

“Wish I’d thought of that.”

“You were busy at the moment. Can’t be expected to think of everything.” He turned around and descended the staircase backward, carrying Ross as if he weighed nothing.

Charles waited there in the trailer for a while, pacing and thinking.

He wanted to do the right thing by everyone, but not if it meant he was abetting some parties in hurting others.

He’d never had the drive to kill anyone, even when he’d been a drunk, and so he couldn’t see himself killing his own child or letting anyone else do it, either.

Could Ross be saved? He didn’t know, but he owed it to his angry son to at least try. If he tried and failed, at least he wouldn’t harbor regrets. If push came to shove, there were places for people like Ross, though Charles wouldn’t wish them on his worst enemy.

He climbed down the stairs into the night and closed the door, and to his surprise, saw Marion striding through the dry grass in the back field toward him.

“Fuck.”

What had she seen? He was pretty sure Calvin had pulled into the road just through the woods, but maybe he was wrong.

“Saw the lights though my bedroom window back here,” she said when she got close. Her gaze flitted over the trailer, taking it in obviously for the first time. “Wanted to see what they were.”

“In horror movies, women who walk toward strange lights generally get abducted by aliens or slaughtered, sweetheart.”

She laughed, and pressed her hands beneath her belly as if to hold it up. “Great. Something new to be afraid of.”

“Let me walk you back to the house.” He held out his elbow to her and bobbed his head toward Clarissa’s house, and they started walking.

“What were you doing back here?” she asked. “When did you get back in town? I figured you’d be gone longer so you could avoid my parents’ accusing glares. I had to endure them for the both of us.”

Yeah, that’d been a nice perk of his most recent trip, although he’d hated to leave so close to her due date. Fortunately, he’d managed to make it back in two days. That still felt like two days too long. “Did you miss me?”

She grinned and stepped over a muddy hole, grunting with effort. She was already three days overdue, and was certainly feeling the strain on her body. Clarissa had been right. The little girl was in no hurry to come out.

“Don’t try to change the subject, Charles. You and Claude think you’re so cute with that, but I know your game now. You’re hiding something.”

“Am I allowed no secrets?”

“It’s your prerogative to have some, but you should know that when I suspect you’re keeping them, I trust you a little less.”

“I’m sorry for that. One day, everything will make sense.”

She ducked beneath Clarissa’s clothesline, as did he.

“Tell me something,” she said as she slowly, laboriously climbed the deck stairs with his hand pressed to the small of her back.

The light from the kitchen shined bright, and laughter from within spilled through the window screen. Sounded like another full house for dinner.

She sat on the patio chair nearest the door and he took the one beside her.

“What would you like me to tell you?”

“How do you know when a match is a good one?”

“There’s no thinking involved. The Fates make the matches. I’m just the messenger equipped at facilitating them.”

“Does everyone have a match?”

“No.” He traced the jagged scars on his palm from an incident of self-harm he couldn’t remember committing. He’d been on one of his binges about fifty years ago and had apparently tried to cut the mark out of his palm, not that it would have done him any good. He’d already let the demon part of himself leach in too far. There was no going back. “Some people don’t have matches, and there are some who have more than one.”

“How do you find them? Say, if you meet someone and want to steer them toward their true love. Momma, for instance. Does she have someone?”

“I haven’t been alerted of it if she does, but that doesn’t mean she won’t at some point. Honestly, I try hard to block out all the chatter, otherwise I get a sort of ping for everyone I walk past and my mind won’t stop churning. It was much easier to ignore when I was drinking. Anyhow, I get a sort of compulsion, a psychic pull. Little triggers that tell me where to go. That’s how I found
you
.”

Her lips parted, but no words came out. She furrowed her forehead and balled her hands into fists atop the chair arms. “Uh …”

“I’m sorry if what I said offended you. I thought you knew most of that already.”

She shook her head and splayed her fingers. The color had drained from her face and eyes went wide with shock.

“What’s wrong, Marion?”

“Uh … Momma?” she called toward the open window.

“Yeah, shug?”

“Something just popped. I’m afraid to move.”

Shit.

Charles wasn’t sure if it was typical for a woman to move from room to room the way Marion was while she labored, but he kept following as close as she’d allow without snapping at him. Already she’d threatened to forcibly relieve him of his testicles and perforate his spleen, and his fear of her was healthy enough that he gave her space.

“She’s like a cat looking for a quiet corner,” Claude whispered when Charles passed him in the hallway.

Charles paused to ask, “Is this normal?”

His brother shrugged. “Typical of her, though, to refuse Daphne’s help.”

Daphne, the midwife/demigoddess Charles had appealed to in a bid to ease Marion’s pain, paced in the living room with her hands clutched behind her back. She seemed aware she was being discussed and lifted her chin toward the brothers as they approached.

They joined her.

“Is this normal?” Charles asked.

“The better question would be, is this
her
normal? I should have been seeing her from the beginning so she’d trust me by now.”

He sank onto the piano bench and buried his face in his hands. “She’s known me for nine months and she’s only started trusting me in the past few weeks. Don’t take her attitude the wrong way.”

“If my mother were here she’d probably entrance her to make her settle in, but I don’t like restricting a birthing mother’s free will.”

Marion unleashed a torrent of expletives from the stairwell and pounded the wall.

He jumped to his feet. He may not have known much about childbirth, but her delivering there on stairs tripped his parental radar as being an unsafe thing.

A moment later, she grunted and her heavy footsteps continued up the stairs.

Ariel and Clarissa joined them from the kitchen with Lottie on their heels. “We’re going to go upstairs. If she’s heading to her room—”

Her footsteps overhead indicated that was exactly where she was going. They all waited quietly until the noise up above ceased.

“Maybe she’s getting close. She’d be upset if we didn’t try to help.”

The women headed toward the stairs and Daphne followed, leaving a mist of calm in her wake that had Charles feeling a bit loopy. It was just her natural aura, but it was wholly incompatible with cambion energy, and always left Charles a bit brain numb. Obviously Claude felt it, too, because he kept blinking as if trying to clear his vision.

Charles sat again and drummed his fingers on his thighs.

Claude perched on the coffee table and did the same.

Charles couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his brother so nervous. Was the birth of his niece really agitating him that much, or was something else burdening that inscrutable mind of his?

“How long do you think John will be able to distract Mr. Thomas?” Claude asked.

Charles sputtered his lips like a motorboat engine, a habit he’d unfortunately picked up from Ross. “I don’t even want to venture a guess. Why?”

“I’m just hoping it’s long enough for us to get in and see her before the coven upstairs erects an impenetrable estrogen barrier.”

Charles grunted and drummed his fingers some more. “They are like a coven, aren’t they?” All the waiting around was making him nauseated with anxiety.

Anxiety. Now
that
was something the typical cambion didn’t experience, but Charles had never really been typical. That’s why he’d drank.

Footsteps bounded down the stairs and Ariel poked her head into the room. “Charles, she wants you.”

“Me?” He pointed to himself as if Ariel had directed her statement to the wrong man.

“Come on, before she changes her mind. She won’t stop crying, and she can’t breathe through it.”

“Why is she crying? Is she in pain? If she’s in pain, then she should—”

“Let’s
go
!”

He was on his feet and a flash and bolted up the stairs.

By the time he’d arrived in the room, Marion was squatting with Clarissa on one arm, Lottie on the other, and Daphne kneeling in front of her with her hands up Marion’s nightgown.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, and he felt like an idiot for asking, and so helpless.

“She’s afraid,” Ariel whispered at his back. “She doesn’t know what the baby will be like.”

Oh
. Well, Charles didn’t know the answer to that, either.

Ariel moved around him, but there was another presence at his back.

Claude. He didn’t enter the room, but instead kept a respectful distance out in the hallway.

“I’ve got the baby’s head against my hand, Charles. Okay, Marion?”

Marion whimpered something unintelligible, but nodded.

“Grab that blanket on the counter quickly, open it, and come catch your daughter.”

Charles must have been rooted in place too long for his brother’s liking, because Claude gave him a hard push forward to get him moving.

He knelt in front of her, doing as Daphne asked.

“Here she is,” Daphne said, and in a flash, there was movement, and then a wet warmth in his arms.

He was so stunned, he couldn’t see through the haze.

Clarissa appeared in front of him with a second blanket and rubbed and massaged until the baby coughed, then cried.

“You gonna be all right, Charles? You’re looking pale,” she said.

“Uh …”

Somehow, a clamp found its way to the umbilical cord and Ariel handed him a pair of scissors. “Unless you plan on biting it, Daddy, cut it so we can get out of Marion’s way.”

His shaking hand grasped the instrument and with far more effort than should have been required for a supernatural being, he cut the cord.

Strong hands got him to his feet, and turned him, and there was Claude, chanting in whisper and pressing a gentle fingertip to the squalling baby’s forehead.

“What are you doing?” Charles felt very proprietary and very wary all of a sudden and held the baby closer, but that was unreasonable. Claude had never done anything to hurt him. He wouldn’t hurt his
baby
, would he?

Claude stopped chanting and laid a kiss on the baby’s forehead and she quieted and blinked.

“What’d you do?”

“There’s only a short time after people like us are born to exterminate that dark seed. You have to kill it before it has a chance to bud.” He inhaled deeply and dragged his sleeve across his sweaty brow. “It’s what
Maman
could have done for me, but didn’t. I … need to go lie down.”

He stepped back, turned, and walked with a seemingly drunken gait toward the hall.

“Claude, thank you,” Charles called after him.

“Who said demons can’t love, huh?” Claude called back.

Someone laid a gentle hand on his left arm, and Charles looked down to find Daphne. “She needs some mommy time and a bath. You can hold her later.”

“But—”

Daphne narrowed her lilac eyes at him, and he sighed and handed the baby over. He hadn’t even gotten a good look at her, really, but at least he’d been the first to hold her.

“Her name’s Ruby,” he announced to all. He didn’t know where that name had come from. He’d grabbed it out of the ether because it just felt right for that little soul. Seemed obvious, and he bet Claude would agree.

He expected Marion to veto, to fight him, but in a tired voice from the bed she’d moved to, she said, “Old-fashioned, just like my name.”

“It was in style when I was born,” he said.

And there was passion in the color red. Ruby would never live in a household where there was no passion.

“Maybe it’ll come back around, then.” Her words slurred as Daphne arranged the baby atop her naked chest.

He bet she was feeling loopy. Maybe a little numb. Now that all the adrenaline had surged, she’d be in some pain, soon. Daphne was probably shielding it from her.

“It’s okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s okay.”

Claude grabbed Charles’s wrist and made him pause at the tree line. “Tell me,” he said, his eyes glowing the red they did whenever the witch in him brewed close to the surface.

Charles swallowed and studied his brother’s serious mien. Sullen was Claude’s usual temperature, but he typically didn’t seem quite so depressed. What had gotten into him?

“What would you like me to tell you?” Charles asked.

“Tell me this isn’t a waste, and that you won’t argue with her.”