Soul Avenged (Sons of Wrath, #1) (51 page)

Ayden nodded
and squeezed her hand a little tighter. “We’ll find him,
Calla.”

~

Gavin’s
Mercedes came to a rolling stop outside of the succubus’ house.

The entire
block was filled with homes half-burnt and boarded up, front yards
covered in snow with long unruly weeds peeking out. The one he
needed sat on the corner, made of brick that had chipped and aged.
At one time, it probably stood majestic, like a castle with its
high gables and uneven dimensions—but too many years had laid
claim. Some of the windows were lined with clear
visqueen
,
and two on the first level had iron bars across them—the kind of
house that made a person question if anyone lived there. Though
parts of it looked occupied—the bikes piled on the front porch,
footprints in the snow, tight windows and doors, unlike the ones
falling off the hinges next door—it mostly just looked like the
other homes in Detroit.

Like they’d
been through war and back.

Not a single
streetlight showed the way as Gavin approached the front door. He
peeked through the distorted window. No movement beyond.
Ordinarily, he would’ve felt bad knocking on the door so late. That
night, he didn’t care. Logan’s life hung on his success with the
woman he hoped was inside.

Gavin pounded
against the flimsy door.

Nothing
stirred inside the house.

His fist
slammed against the door once more. “Hello?”

A light
flickered on, and the door swung open to reveal a woman holding a
shotgun, her finger cocked and ready to pull the trigger. Her fiery
auburn hair was in disarray, not pulled back into the slick
ponytail that she’d typically worn at the casino. Sweatpants and a
T-shirt hung loose on her. Oddly, not the attire he imagined a
succubus wearing to bed.

The gun
lowered and her lips tightened. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to
talk to you.”

Her eyes,
tired and red, gave a very dismissive glance, and she reached for
the door. “Get the hell off my property, demon.”

Gavin wedged
his foot in the door as she tried to close it. “Do you think I’d
come to you if it wasn’t urgent?”

She pushed
against him, straining to shut the door. “I don’t care … what you
consider urgent. Get … off my … property … before I call the
cops.”

“Right. Like
the cops give a shit about some …”
succubus tramp?
He
cringed at himself for almost spewing the words that would have
surely sealed Logan’s fate.

“Some what?”
Her eyes glowed as red as her hair.

Bring it
down a notch.
“Some helpless female with children.” His nose
twitched at the thought—mostly because succubi were a far throw
from helpless.

Being only
half succubus, evident in some of her human flaws and the fact that
she wasn’t capable of chucking him across the yard, she’d be only
half in the ‘know’ of otherworldly things. Humans just didn’t take
the time to care about implausible ideas like demons and lycans.
She liked sex and she knew how to heal. Likely, she had no idea how
the two came to be for her.

“Look,” Gavin
said with a sigh, “I don’t have a lot of time. I really need your
help right now, or my brother is going to die.”

She eased up
on the door. “Which brother?”

Gavin frowned.
“Does it matter?”

“Yes. It does.
Which brother?”

“Logan.”

She pursed her
lips. “You’re coming to me for something?”

“Yes.”

She tucked the
gun up under her arm. “You know the price of my help?”

“Yes.”

The door swung
wide open. “Come in.” She pointed a finger at him. “And if you make
one sound and wake my kids up, I will castrate you and feed you to
my dog.”

Of course she
had kids. All succubi bore dozens of illegitimate children from
different human fathers. With the kind of sex drive they had,
physically needing it every night, pregnancy was inevitable. A
succubus could bear children for a good couple of centuries before
her fertility declined. Their species dictated that they were
forced to bed a different man every night … or weaken and die. If
the sex didn’t kill the human men, life with a succubus damn near
did. The ones who survived didn’t stick around. Not even the
Saevious Demons were bat shit crazy enough to bond with them, so
succubi kids always ended up half human—and their moms always
single.

“Nice place,”
Gavin said

Her eyes
narrowed on him. “Kinda hard to fix the place up when you don’t
have a job.”

She led him
through the dark living room to the kitchen, patting her hair down
as she went. Paint cracked, and wallpaper peeled away from the
walls, leaving patches of dirty drywall. The place was clean, he’d
give her that. Shit, couldn’t be easy to polish, though—and
strangely enough, it didn’t smell of that moldy, rotted smell
rundown places often wore like a second skin. It actually smelled
kinda
nice
. A sweet aroma, like something had been baked
recently.

“You stole
from me,” he said when they reached the kitchen, another room in no
better condition than the rest of the house, but again, clean and
well-kempt.

Sabelle swung
around and placed her hands on her hips. “I told you before. I
didn’t steal from you. Jimmy has a problem with succubi. Some of
the other girls told me.”

Gavin fell
into a tottery kitchen chair and tensed before relaxing, fearful of
breaking it with his weight. “It was all on camera, Sabelle. I saw
it.”

She took the
seat across from him, eyes scorning. “You know, for a big bad
casino boss, you’re not very smart.”

He leaned
forward and cocked his head. “Excuse me?”

“What do you
want?”

“We had an
intruder in our home. He carried a dagger laced in Demortis. Do you
know anything about this metal?”
Let’s see how much of the demon
world you believe in.

“Yes. It’s
deadly. If it comes in contact with your bloodstream, it dissolves
and travels quickly, increasing your adrenaline to ensure it’s
pumped rapidly through the body.”

Damn.
“You know more than I anticipated.”

“Right,” she
said, crossing her arms. “Because I’m some stupid, illiterate
succubus.”

Gavin shook
his head. “That’s not what I was going to say.”

“Think what
you want. I’ll wear my
sin
like a fucking badge,
demon
.” She sniffed. “So. Your brother. When was he
stabbed?”

“I don’t know
exactly. I’m guessing it was about an hour or so ago.”

She bit her
bottom lip. “It might be too late for him.”

“Then we need
to go. Now.”

“And leave my
kids alone?” She drew back. “Are you insane?”

You
care?
“We’ll bring them. Between the two cars, I think we can
make room for them.”

“Two cars? I
have no car. And why would we need two?”

The answer
must have been written all over his face.

“Right.
Because all succubus whores have hundreds of babies from different
daddies.”

Gavin fought
to keep the shock from his expression. “So, we can all fit in one
vehicle?”

“They’re
asleep. I’ll need you carry Thomas, and I’ll carry Jane.”

Two kids?
That’s it? And normal human names? Is this a joke?
Next, she’d
be telling him they had the same father. “All right.”

“They’re
twins. So don’t get weirded out that they sleep in the same bed.
It’s a comfort to them.”

Two kids
sleeping in the same bed didn’t weird him out. What weirded him out
was that she’d managed the impossible. She must’ve been the only
succubus on the planet with less than ten kids. By the same man,
too.

“I need to
grab my supply bag,” she said. “I’ll be right back. You stay right
here.” She pointed a finger at him. “You may be a former employer,
but that doesn’t mean I trust you.”

Gavin nodded.
His pulse raced with the anxiety of needing to get back, and each
idle minute chipped away at his patience.

As if she
knew, Sabelle appeared nearly as quickly as she’d left. “Let’s go
grab them.”

They climbed a
rickety and steep wooden staircase that groaned under Gavin’s
weight.

Sabelle turned
and glared as she climbed. “My God, you’re noisy as hell.”

“Sorry,” Gavin
whispered.

The bedroom
she led him to wasn’t at all what he’d imagined in his mind: a
dirty, old mattress lying on the floor and her kids cuddled
together to stay warm under some frayed quilt. It appeared to be
the only room she’d spent any time on at all. The walls, painted a
baby blue, adorned with decals of princesses and trucks had a
whimsical appeal to them. A mural of an enormous tree hovering over
a fairytale village on the far wall caught his attention.

“Did you paint
that?”

“Yeah,” she
whispered, approaching the side of a small bed.

Inside, were
two children huddled close together, not so much for warmth it
seemed, but as if they were hugging each other in sleep. Both had
blond curls and snow-white skin, like cuddly little cherubs. Gavin
sucked at guessing ages, but he suspected they were toddlers.

Thomas hardly
stirred when Sabelle scooped him up into her arms and wrapped him
in a blanket before passing him to Gavin. Gavin held out his arms,
not really knowing what to do with them. After settling Thomas
against his chest, Sabelle guided his hands to hold the small
child. She paused for a moment, her gaze lifting from her son to
Gavin.

His eyes
dodged to the side.
Don’t even go there.

Jane stirred
on the bed, perhaps looking for her brother. Sabelle lifted her
into her arms. “Shhh, baby. Mommy’s here.” She wrapped a blanket
around the little girl then nodded, signaling Gavin out of the
room.

The boy
weighed nothing in Gavin’s arms, so much so, he could hardly
believe he carried something. Not something.
A child.
The
oddest sensation he’d ever known. Never in the time he’d roamed the
earth, in all the jobs he’d taken as a vengeance dealer, had he
ever encountered the opportunity to hold a child.

An awkward
sensation settled over him.

As they
stepped out into the frigid winter air, the boy’s body tensed in
Gavin’s arms, and he hustled to the car with Sabelle and her bundle
on his heels.

It took less
than a minute to get everyone in and settled before Gavin turned
the engine and sped off down the side street.

“Can you slow
down a little?” Sabelle asked from the passenger seat “My kids
aren’t even in carseats. I’m not interested in killing them.”

She’d be the
first succubus he’d ever met that wasn’t, but he let up a little on
the gas. “So, what are the odds that you can help my brother?”

“I’ll know
when I see him.”

Gavin’s heart
raced. “I have to hurry. If he dies …” That sadness returned,
threatening to take him under. He choked it back.

“Look, I’m
going to do all I can, all right?” She shifted to face him, her
gaze hitting Gavin like a lazer beam even without him meeting it.
“I didn’t think Wraths gave a damn about each other like that.”

Gavin stared
off through the windshield. “My brothers mean more to me than
anything in this world.”

“Must be
nice.”

“You have
siblings?” Of course she did, she came from a line of succubi, but
Gavin had already been surprised by her—why not again.

“Too
many.”

There we
go.

“But you
probably expected that, didn’t you? In fact, I’ll bet you’re
puzzling how I only have two kids. Twins, even.”

He glanced
over quickly then back to the road. “You don’t have to tell me
anything that you don’t want to.”

“Good. I’m not
interested in small talk with you.”

Neither am
I.

They sped
through the dark streets in silence. The anxiety brimming inside of
Gavin reached an explosive level the closer they came to reaching
the manor. At last, he pulled up to the gate, and it opened
automatically.

Bennett had
been waiting for him. Everyone waited for him.

Sabelle sat
upright in the seat. “Holy shit, this is where you live? I imagined
it was nice. But this is
unreal
.”

“Yeah,” was
all that Gavin could muster. Preoccupation strangled his words.

They skidded
to a stop and Gavin jumped out of the car, slamming the door shut
without thinking. Thomas popped up in the back seat, his eyes
glassed-over and droopy.

Sabelle shot
Gavin a disapproving glance.

Thomas’s head
lolled again when Gavin lifted him into his arms. “Daddy?” he
whispered before his breathing deepened.

Daddy?
As if the guy would’ve been around long enough for him to know he
had a father.

Gavin trekked
up the stairs with the boy draped across his arms. Bennett and
Annabelle met him at the door.
Thank gods.
Gavin transferred
the boy into Bennett’s arms. He gestured to Sabelle to hand Jane
over to Annabelle.

She clutched
Bennett’s arm while holding tight to Jane. “No. I’m not okay with
this. I don’t even know these people.”

Gavin gently
reached for Sabelle’s arm, tugging it away from Bennett. “They’re
going to be in the next room, Sabelle. They will not hurt them, I
promise you.”

Reluctantly,
Sabelle placed Jane into Annabelle’s arms.

Anna glowed.
“Oh, sweet heavens, she looks like an angel!” She looked down with
adoration and kissed the girl on her spongy blonde curls.

“Take them to
the guest room. The one next to Logan’s.”

As Gavin
mounted the stairs, a beckon to Sabelle had her following close
behind him, her sights on her children the whole climb.

At the top, he
gave her a moment to watch them be settled into bed, before taking
her elbow and urging her into Logan’s room, where his brothers and
Ayden stood surrounding the bed. His heart drummed a nervous beat
as he approached his brother. The first time he’d seen him since
earlier in the night. Tears welled, but he choked them back and
clenched his jaw tight.