Echoes of the Past (Demon Squad) (7 page)

Should you encounter him, I beg you do not tell him of us, for it would only enrage him beyond control. The child grows strong within me, and I would not have it without its father. This is the only request I would ask of you, fair Lucifer.

Return to me soon, my love.

Charlotte

My heart went still in my chest, the papers slipping from numb fingers and fluttering to the floor.

My love
.
Charlotte
.

Darkness fluttered before my eyes and I fell back onto the bed, staring up at the carved stone ceiling. My head spun as a churning sickness welled inside me. Had Azrael been telling the truth?

Charlotte.

The name repeated inside my thoughts, circling inside my brain like a vulture, swooping over and over to tear away tiny pieces of my sanity.

My love. Charlotte.

The bed shifted, and I felt
Karra’s
warm breath on my cheek. She spoke to me, but I couldn’t understand her, the words muffled and unclear. The only thing that mattered right then was the name—
Charlotte
—and what these letters meant.

They were written by my mother.

Stiff fingers wiped the tears from my cheeks I hadn’t known I’d shed until I felt their warm wetness smeared across my face.
Karra
cradled me as confusion crashed over in tsunami waves, battering my memories and washing away the lies that had collected on the shore of my life.

There was so much I didn’t know, so much I was raised to believe; so many lies fed to me. Just as the rest of the Demonarch had always wondered what Lucifer saw in me, I, too, had always wondered. Here before me, in the papers scattered across the floor, was the answer.

For all that Lucifer had hidden from me, this was by far the worst violation of the trust I placed in him. Bile filled my throat as the pieces fell into place, fury burning away my confusion. I sat up in a rush,
Karra
clinging to me to keep me on the bed.

“Lucifer had an affair with my mother and had gotten her pregnant.
He
stole her away from my father.” I pulled away and got to my feet.
Karra
jumped up beside me, sympathy etched across her face. She had understood what the letters meant when she stumbled across them. “My mother was killed because she was carrying my uncle’s child. No matter who killed her…
Lucifer
caused her death!”

Blinded by the realization, I shrugged away from
Karra
and ran for the nearest of Lucifer’s thing. She let me go. At the bookshelves, my fists flung loose of their own volition, smashing into the shelves. Splinters of wood and the books we hadn’t yet rifled went flying, torn pages filling the air with a confetti rain. Continuing around the room, I destroyed everything in my path. Marble statues and priceless works of art exploded in my wake. I felt my fingers snapping like twigs against the cold stone of the monuments, but I didn’t care. I wanted to hurt; needed to.

Blood splattered my face as I pounded another statue into dust, droplets landing in my mouth and stinging my eyes. The coppery taste on my tongue riled my senses as I reared back to strike another blow.

“Rough day?”

I spun around at the sound of the calm voice, and growled. Baalth stood in the doorway looking like he’d just come back from an island vacation. Dressed in his customary suit and tie, his skin was tanned and his black hair and goatee were immaculate. There was no sign of his recent battles with the power he’d stolen from Glorius.

For some reason, seeing him so rested and at peace with his personal demons only infuriated me more. “Fuck you!” I scooped up the letters and stormed over to Baalth, throwing them in his face. Blood soaked into the paper and splattered across Baalth’s expensive suit.

He stared at me without flinching as the letters fluttered to the floor. A shadowy darkness swirled in his eyes. “I suggest you watch your mouth, Frank.” His voice was quiet, a gentle breeze. It only pissed me off more.

“Fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you! You knew!” I shouted, poking him the chest to punctuate every word.

I didn’t even see him move.

Something slammed into my chest and sent me hurtling across the room. I crashed into the bed frame, the thick exotic wood snapping into tinder with the force. My skull smacked into the wall behind it, its solidness stopping my momentum with a bone-jarring thump.
Karra
was at my side immediately. She was a blur of movement and sound, my brain rattled into near incoherence.

“Don’t
ever
presume to touch me again, Triggaltheron.” The steel of Baalth’s voice cut through the clutter in my head.

I felt
Karra
stiffen and move to stand, but I managed enough presence of mind to grab hold of her wrist. “No.” My voice sounded like brittle glass. She tensed against my grasp but didn’t break away despite how easy it would have been.

A shadow hovered over me and I felt the wash of Baalth’s power as though I were being stung by a million wasps. “I don’t know what’s caused you to be so foolish, Frank, but I will
not
entertain such blatant disrespect. Not now, not ever.”

“You were Lucifer’s lieutenant,” I heard
Karra
tell him through the fog in my head. “You had to know what was going on between Lucifer and Frank’s mother.”

“And you would be Longinus’ daughter, I presume. I can smell his stink on you,” Baalth answered. I felt
Karra’s
rage and tightened my grip. “What I know is no concern of yours. If Frank wants to have a civil discussion, he knows how to find me. Until that time, I can’t be bothered with either of you.”

I opened my eyes just in time to see Baalth wave his hand, tracers of magic at his fingertips. Then we were gone.

Chapter Eight

Dumped unceremoniously into my living room by Baalth, the short fall to the floor jarred some sense loose. My eyes rolled around in the sockets for a few seconds and then settled. While things were a little blurry about the edges, my vision was clearing.
Karra
helped me onto the couch and I heard Chatterbox clucking away across the room.

“Are you okay?”
Karra
asked.

My head pounded like it was a kick drum for the band Deicide, and my chest felt as if I’d played chicken with a nuke and lost, but it wasn’t too bad. I couldn’t feel my hands anymore, but I didn’t want to look at them. They’d heal soon enough, but I wasn’t up for watching it happen.

I shook my head. “Yeah.”

Karra
apparently took my indecision as the former. She disappeared from my side as my eyes focused slowly on the porn Chatterbox was watching on the big screen. I looked away when I could see it clearly, my stomach roiling at the sight. All I could picture was my mother. Lucifer had stolen her from my father, and she’d been killed for it. To top it all off, I’d been used to slay
Arol
for Lucifer’s lust, pure and simple. I was nothing more than a pawn; a pawn
and
a murderer. I could add patricide to my resume of fuck ups.

My screamed protestations played on inside my head.

M
y father is dead
.

Azrael’s
words came back to me:

Of all the lies you’ve swallowed, like the lonely whore desperate to find love in a mouthful of bitter seed, that’s the greatest of them.

The uncertainty spewed from me. I crumpled over and puked, the lies of my life spraying warm and wet across the carpet. On my knees, I hovered weakly over my vomit. My body shook violently as I puked again and again and again, my throat shredded in its vehemence. Red streaks of blood lent color to the whitish bile as I coughed up chunks of phlegm.

Karra
returned and pulled me onto the couch, pressing a smooth glass vial against my lips before I could protest. I tasted the bitter fluid of Lucifer’s blood and went to spit it out, but she pressed my mouth shut. The healing power of the claret went to work without me needing to swallow. I wanted to scream, to kick, to rage against the essence she’d made me consume, but I couldn’t find it in me to be angry at her. She’d done nothing but what she felt was right. I couldn’t hold that against her.

As the blood went to work, I sunk down into the couch with a ragged sigh.
Karra
settled beside me, her hand caressing my cheek as she whispered her love in my ear. Her words couldn’t chase away the pain of what I’d learned, but her touch and soft kisses were enough to soften the edges just enough so I didn’t snap…again. Unable to hold it in any longer, I fell into her arms and wept.

I don’t know how long I stayed there, my breath coming in roughened gasps, but
Karra
held me close the entire time. After what seemed like forever, my tears had started to run their course, the sterile sense of realism and cynicism, which had abandoned me, crept back, encasing the wounds in its empty anesthetic.

“
Fffurrrriiiieeeeessss
!
”

Chatterbox’s voice broke through my misery.
Karra
hopped to her feet. Alone on the couch, I looked up through wet eyes to see her in a fighting posture, staring at the front door. A dozen or more growls erupted around the house and I wondered what had set the dread fiends off when I suddenly remembered having ordered them to silence. They spilled out of the spare bedroom without a sound and into the hallway just as the front door was torn from its hinges. Through it came a band of werewolves, all gnashing teeth and slashing claws. Their growls and howls made my ears ring.

Glass shattered behind us as more of the werewolves burst through the windows. Chatterbox threw himself forward and rolled off the table to hide. Just as I hopped to my feet, the forty dread fiends crashed into the line of
weres
before they’d gotten more than ten feet into the house. The looks on the werewolves’ faces were priceless.
Surprise
!

The fiends tore into them without mercy.
Karra
and I stood back and watched as the werewolves went down in a whimpering heap of bloody and savaged fur. Several of them scrambled to escape but the fiends were having none of that. Arms and legs were ripped free and flung about the living room, decorating my house in shades of red and brown. Judging by the smell, there was some shit mixed into the whole concoction of carnage.

Before I could even think to call the fiends to heel, they had slaughtered all of the werewolves. Mangled bodies were littered around my living room, my kitchen, and dining room. There was more red on the walls than there was white. Everything was coated in a layer of werewolf gut juice.

“Put the door back in place,” I yelled to one of the fiends. It complied immediately, snatching up the door and holding it inside the broken frame to keep it there. It wasn’t perfect, but it’d do to block people’s view from the outside. “Clean this up,” I told the rest. I didn’t have to tell them to do it quickly, as that was implied in the tone of my voice. While the fiends weren’t anything resembling smart, they were well trained.

I ran to the windows and yanked the curtains closed. Peering out between them, I didn’t see anything to make me think the attack had been witnessed; not that there were a whole bunch of folks still living in my neighborhood. After all the weirdness around my house, the storms created by the Tree of Life were the last straw for most of the people. A whole bunch of them up and moved away, abandoning their homes to never come back. I imagine some of them had gotten caught up in the deadly fall and were killed, but regardless, the nearby population had dwindled in just the last few days. While that was good in a sense, it made it real easy to pin the tail on the paranormal jackass when shit like this went down. Hoping I’d gotten away without being noticed this time, I went back over to watch what
Karra
was doing.

She lifted one of the werewolf heads and set it on the table where Chatterbox had been just a minute before. The zombie head peeked up from his shelter underneath and gave a crooked smile, not that he could give any other kind. It took me a second to figure out what
Karra
was doing, staring into the dead wolf’s eyes, but I got it. Unlike me, she didn’t need a living body to interrogate.

After a moment, the wolf’s eyelids fluttered and its eyes filled with reddened life. Its gaze swung around and found
Karra’s
as it licked its lip, its blackened tongue lolling between its shattered teeth.

“
Mmaasssstttteeeerrrr
,” it said in a roughened imitation of Chatterbox’s dragged-out enunciation.

“Why are you here?”
Karra
asked it.

Despite spending a bunch of time with Chatterbox, and having seen
Karra’s
powers in action, it was weird watching her carry on a discussion with a dead werewolf.

“
Ttriigggaallltthherrronn
.”

What a surprise. Not in the mood for Captain Obvious’ charade, I stormed over and grabbed the werewolf head by its scruff. “No shit, Sherlock, now tell me why you want me.”

Karra
must have commanded it to answer because it did without hesitation.

“
Rreeevveeenngge
.”