A Demon in Waiting (Crimson Romance) (20 page)

Ariel’s expression went from anger to abject confusion.

John couldn’t blame her. He felt like he’d missed an entire unit of history himself. Angels? Demons? Witches? Other non-specified supernatural beings? What else didn’t he know?

When Ariel was safe in Clarissa’s arms with Mark standing in front of them, John turned back to his father. He was going to poke the lion in his cage and see what happened. What was the worst he could do? Kill him?

Well, if he did, he was reasonably sure where his soul would end up, and it wouldn’t involve fluffy bunnies or ennui. But even heaven seemed bland compared to a short lifetime with Ariel.

“Do you still want me, Gulielmus?” He pushed back the sunglasses he’d been wearing so his father could see his eyes. His pupils and irises had all but vanished, although Claude had asked around and reassured him they’d come back eventually, just like the pink of his skin had.

He wanted his father to see how far gone he was. How nothing he could do would make it better. He’d never be able to affect him again, because once the demon was gone — the taint cleansed — it could never find a new inlet in him. Claude had made sure of that. His body had sealed itself from the inside out.

Anger flashed on Gulielmus’s face. His eyes darkened. His teeth bared. His aura went even redder.

John now understood why all those ancient people had depicted devils with horns and tails — scary things that didn’t exist in nature. It was because their human brains couldn’t make sense of what they were seeing. It was all the mortal sins all rolled up and combined in a human shape. Sometimes beautiful, but when unfettered, utterly frightening to the extent the mind couldn’t process it.

“So what now,
Dad
?”

“I should kill you where you stand for defying me.”

“Go ahead. I know you’ll never leave Ariel alone, and I don’t want her being harmed on my conscience for the rest of my life, however long it is. Go ahead and do what you’ve got to do.”

Gulielmus narrowed his eyes. “Or how about I let you live and torch the place with them in it?”

He snapped his fingers and a ring of fire spiraled around the house, creating an impassible barrier for the humans within it. Ariel’s worst nightmare. Or it
had
been up until that moment, probably. She was probably having her life flash before her eyes every thirty seconds or so.

“John!” she called out from the porch.

“Don’t worry about us,” Mark said. “I won’t let it get close.”

Gulielmus snorted. “Goody two-shoes. Always hated you. Now I have a reason.”

“So, what’s it going to be?” John could feel the fire burning hot behind him, and no matter what Mark had said, he knew it was the real deal and capable of untold destruction. Everything that little family had was in that house, and even if they got out of it, chances were good they’d be on the run for the rest of their lives just like Ariel’s parents and sister.

That had been their punishment for threatening the peace between the sides. Good and evil. By killing a demon, they’d upset the balance.

“Your choice, sonny boy. If I can’t have you, give me the girl or the old lady. My boss would be pleased to have either.”

“Momma, what’s he talking about?”

Clarissa didn’t answer.

“Fine.” John shrugged. He turned around and stared through the licking flames at Clarissa. She blinked her eyes thrice rapidly. John looked at Ariel, still confused, but now tortured. She was probably wondering, “How could he even choose? How dare he?”

But this was always in the cards. Clarissa knew it. Planned for it.

He turned back to his father. “Take the old lady. Since Ariel has an angel here, you’re not going to get close to her anyway. Who knows how long that guy has been tailing her?”

“Longer than you know,” Mark said. “But not just me.”

Gulielmus’s jaw ground left to right. He sighed, and the flames in front of them abated. “Bring her through, Mark.”

They watched Mark give Ariel a warning look as he laced his fingers around one of her arms.

“I thought you were supposed to be one of the good guys,” Ariel said. “Where are the good guys? It’s like you all have this incredible power and all you do is stand back and let things happen or you’re complicit in the evil. Is that all this world is? Everything flows toward the bad?”

Mark didn’t answer. He put his head down and guided a wobbling Clarissa down the brick steps. Her ankles were so swollen, John couldn’t differentiate them from her calves. She had to be in great pain.

Mark and Clarissa passed through the flame perimeter unscathed and Gulielmus grabbed her as if he thought Mark — an angel — would renege.

Mark returned to the porch, wrapped his arms around Ariel, and they disappeared with her screaming, “Momma!”

And John’s heart broke. It was really too much for a woman like her to bear. She was too good, and awful shit kept happening to her.

Fix this for her.

He hands balled into fists at his sides as the flames behind him vanished. Who needed Hell when his father could make everywhere he went Hell?

And suddenly he understood what Gulielmus meant about Hell, because he’d just figured out what his own personal one would be. Hell was when someone or something took away the things that mattered and left you with nothing — not even the will to start over.

Gulielmus had pressed his hands against Clarissa’s cheeks, staring down at her face as if he were studying his fish dinner for bones.

Clarissa stared back, unfazed. The only thing that scared Clarissa would be Ariel getting hurt. She didn’t care about herself. With one grandchild being lost to her, she’d readily sacrifice herself for the safety of the other.

They stared so long, and John watched them so long, he didn’t notice the subtle changes taking place to Clarissa. But after one long blink to wet his dry eyes, he saw that the fine lines of her face had filled. Her cheeks had plumped. The skin of her neck had tightened. Her hair darkened. The spots on the hands that pushed at his chest faded. Her shoulders straightened. Those inches she said she’d lost over the past years lengthened her spine. Her ankles slimmed. And John realized what was happening. An incubus could not only take away, but could also give
back
.

Clarissa’s eyes narrowed and the young woman smacked Gulielmus hard across the face.

“I won’t be your whore. I know it’s on your mind. You don’t even have to say it.”

He grabbed her wrist. “Do that again, and you won’t be fit to be anyone’s whore. Let’s go. I’ve got someone for you to meet.”

“Great. While we’re making introductions … ” With her free hand, she pulled Mark’s blue-bladed knife from her housedress’s pocket and made a quick carving on Gulielmus’s chest.

He drew back, baring his teeth and hissing, but froze. He couldn’t move.

“I know the rest of that.” Clarissa tossed the knife up and caught it handily by the handle. “You know I know it. Now, I’ve got you stunned here and I can finish you off just like we did to that animal that ruined my sister. But, I won’t. Know why?”

All Gulielmus could do was flash his red aura a little darker.

“I’ll tell you why, pretty boy. By the way, my name is Clarissa. Learn my name. Memorize it. I know you’re bad at that, but you’re gonna wanna remember mine. I don’t know if demons have nightmares, but I’m gonna be yours if you go anywhere near my grandbaby again.”

She circled around the incapacitated demon, eyeing him as if he were a museum sculpture. “Mark said a lot of what goes on in your world is political. That’s fine. I understand politics real good, and that’s why I don’t engage in them. Lot of
quid pro quo
going on. Well, let me tell you this.” She paused in front of him, propping her fists on her now-narrow hips.

John suddenly had a good idea of where Ariel had gotten her spunk from. She must have been the spitting image of her mother.

“Here’s how our
quid pro quo
is gonna work. You’re going to go the fuck away and there’s not going to be any killing here today. No one’s getting kidnapped. No one’s having their soul darkened. And you’re gonna leave this boy alone. You may have made him in your own image in a lot of ways, but he’s too damned good. Y’all don’t like good so much, right?”

That red flash again.

“Very nice. Thanks for visiting. By the way, if you try this shit again, I won’t be so nice. All I need is one more little tweak of this … ” She tickled his chest with the knife point and he got redder, hotter. “And you’re smote. Okay? I’ll just keep it there to make it easier. Sorry about your shirt. Looks expensive. And thanks for my new youthful reflexes. I suspect they’ll come in handy.” She curtsied and lowered her head. “Now, please go to Hell. Wherever that is.”

She did some little tweak of the battered mess on his chest and he was animate again, snarling at John.

“You’re a fucking awful son.”

He shrugged. “If it’s any consolation, Ariel probably won’t want me.”

“It does console me.” Gulielmus vanished.

John sighed.

Clarissa wrapped an arm around his back and guided him toward the porch. “Let’s get some coffee brewing, huh? You’re going to have to go out and get some grass seed and fix that mess your daddy left.”

“Yeah, I guess it might as well be me.”

Mark set Ariel down once again on Momma’s front porch and whistled low at the charred grass. “Yikes. I guess it could be worse. It’s not salted, so at least the grass’ll come back.”

Ariel just stared at him.

“This is weird, right?”

She nodded.

“Yeah. Well … ” He pushed his glasses up his nose — he probably didn’t even need them — and held out a hand. “Uh, Mark DeAngelo. Angel at your service.”

Ariel shook it and felt utterly ridiculous. Lied to. Bamboozled. Everyone was a fraud, it seemed, except her. Or maybe she was a fraud, too, and she was in some weird, vivid dream that was the opposite of reality.

She pinched herself. Nope. That hurt like a bitch.

“So, see you at work tomorrow?”

“Are you kidding me? Tell me you’re frickin’ kidding me.”

Mark cringed. “No. Guy’s gotta earn a living, and I really am a copywriter most of the time. Following you around isn’t exactly profitable.”

“Apparently being me isn’t particularly profitable, either.”

“Hey, things’ll shake out. I’m sorry you had to find out about your parents this way, but I was a concession of that deal. Me and a few other angels. You were just a toddler at the time, and they assigned you a team that would get deployed at certain points of your life. Betty, your L.A. angel, worries about you, by the way.”

“Betty.” Her old landlord. She grinned. How many times had she told Betty she was an angel for looking in on her?

“Anyway, I didn’t get deployed until you were in actual harm. I think I got buzzed sometime after you met John. That’s when I felt like your soul was in peril.”

Ariel’s cheeks burned. She was pretty sure she knew what they were doing when her soul was crying out for salvation. And she was pretty sure Mark knew what that was, too.

“Anyhow, your parents’ lot in life is that if they slow down, something might catch up to them. And I’m sorry your grandmother never found what foster home they put your little sister in after she was born. Maybe it’s best that way.”

“Maybe so.”

“Hey, good news is she should be pretty much invisible to demon sorts until her next birthday. Hope you can find her by then, because that’s when her shield wears off. She doesn’t have a team. We hoped by now she wouldn’t need one.” He waved, and was gone.

John stepped outside at that moment bearing two ceramic coffee mugs and wearing a wary smile — this one quite different from the one Gulielmus had been wearing earlier. Gulielmus didn’t have an apologetic bone in his body.

She slumped onto the porch swing, sighing as she accepted one of the cups.

John sat beside her, but put a careful gap between them on the bench. They let the swing sway a while without saying anything, both looking down into their coffee cups.

Then, they spoke over each other. He said, “Ariel, I’m sorry it had to come to this.”

She said, “So, you were only after my soul all this time?”

They went quiet again. She wanted an answer to that question, though. So she looked at him, hoping the intensity of her glare burned holes right through that blond head of his.

“I’ve never been a good liar, sweetpea, so I’ll be honest. I lured you at that gas station back in the desert, and when I got in your car I thought it’d just be a quick thing. I thought it’d be easy, you know? But, then you turned out to be interesting.”

She scoffed. “Yeah, that’s exactly what every girl wants to hear. That she’s
interesting.
A girl will fall in love with you over words like that.”

“No need to be sarcastic, Ariel. Look at it from my perspective. I had a sheltered upbringing. I was a throwaway. I never met a woman like you before. Naturally, I was intrigued. But then it seemed like you were doing more magic on me than I was on you.”

Now he looked at her and his expression really was contrite.

Damn him.

“So how much of it was your cambion appeal and how much was just John?”

“I swear to you, Ariel. The only time I enthralled you was at that gas station in Arizona, and I can’t say I regret it now. We wouldn’t be here, otherwise.”

“And where exactly is here?” she whispered. “This isn’t how normal people come together. Sane, normal women don’t pick up hitchhikers who later turn out to be demon spawn. Normal women don’t have angel protectors. Normal twenty-six-year-old women don’t have grandmothers who look thirty.”

He lifted his shoulders just slightly and rubbed his eyes, which had been white earlier, but now had a pop of color. A pale outline, really, but more than what was there before. “I’m new at this, too. I have no idea what I am. Not human. Not angel. Not demon. I don’t know what unusual things will happen to me or what I’m capable of.”

“You mean whether or not you’ll die if I hit you with my car.”

He smiled, but it was a small one. “You wouldn’t do that.”