Infernal Father of Mine (8 page)

David sighed. "We could try the demon
arch."

I looked at it for a long moment before finally
deciding it might be worth a try even if the idea of entering the
demon world scared the tinkle out of me. I closed the connection
with the Gloom arch and worked on sealing the circle around the
demon arch. As before, it took me several tries just to close the
circle.

"Not working?" David said.

I grimaced. "Just barely. Something about this
place makes it really hard to reach my magic." As if to confirm
that theory, I spent the next several minutes fruitlessly trying to
open the demon arch. Unlike the Gloom arch, I didn't sense any
response from this one. I finally gave up. "This one must require
an Exorcist singing ritual."

"I'm not much of a singer," David said, "so I
can't help you there."

"Yeah, we're basically screwed," I said. I
looked around despite my inability to see more than a foot in any
direction. "We need to get out of here before Daelissa's people
arrive."

"With fog this thick, it's no wonder they
aren't here yet." My father blew out a sigh. "There's only one
chance of getting out of here I can think of."

"And that would be?"

"The Obsidian Arch in the Grotto." He shrugged.
"I don't know the odds of an accidental Gloom rift opening, but
unless you have another suggestion, we should head
there."

Nothing better sprang to mind. Cinder had once
told me under usual circumstances, the odds of an accidental Gloom
fracture around an Obsidian Arch were about fifteen percent.
Standing here gave us a zero percent chance to escape. The math
wasn't too hard to do, and I was willing to try anything to protect
Mom and Ivy. Even without considering the odds, something felt
right about going there. I couldn't explain the feeling, only that
thinking about going to the Grotto gave me a sense of purpose. It
was a rather enigmatic feeling. Then again, I was standing right
next to an enigma I used to call Dad.

David headed across the room, quickly vanishing
from sight.

I shook my head and followed, determined to
learn more about him. "I didn't know you could do magic. How did
you crack the ground open just before they banished us?"

"I've learned a few things over the
years."

I pshawed. "Years? How about centuries? Or
better yet, millennia?" Dad looked like a well-preserved man in his
early forties. "You once told me you were really only about forty.
You lied to me."

He nodded. "Yep. I lied about a lot of
things."

What the hell?
"You don't even sound
ashamed about it."

"Why should I be? I did what I had to do." He
reached the large wooden doors to the church and pushed them open
to reveal more fog.

"You lied to your own son, you ass." I almost
punched him again. Seeing as how the last time I'd done that hadn't
achieved the desired effect, I held back. "Why don't you just come
out and tell me the truth?"

"I'm an old dude," he said, navigating the
stairs in front of the church.

I waited in silence as he bent down and
examined the sidewalk, hoping he would elaborate. Impatience
overwhelmed me. "Are you going to tell me?"

"I just told you the truth," he said, forehead
wrinkling. "Wasn't that what you wanted?"

"You didn't say
how
old you
are."

"Really, really old."

I grabbed his arm and jerked him to his feet.
"Keep it up and I'm going to beat the snot out of you, old
man."

"I thought I raised you better."

Heat flared in my face. It took everything I
had not to pounce on him and—what? Beat him into a bloody pulp? It
wouldn't help a thing. My anger cooled. "You know what? You're not
even worth my time." I stalked off in what I hoped was the general
direction of the Grotto.

"Why couldn't they wait until night?" someone
complained from somewhere in the fog.

I came to a stop and felt David bump into me.
Putting a finger to my lips, I listened.

"You think they care if we can see or not?"
another man replied to the first. "We're supposed to take them to
the fortress."

"A little heads up would've been nice," growled
the first man. "The worst part is I won't even get to see the look
in their eyes when they realize they don't have their supernatural
abilities." He chuckled. "I love that part."

"I think we should have a little fun," his
partner said. "Let's kick some demon spawn ass." He spat. "I hate
those inhuman things."

The voices were closing in on our position
fast. I motioned David back the other way. He nodded and we
carefully made our way down the street. I rammed my stomach into a
parking meter and grunted.

"You hear that?" one of the men
said.

They went silent. I listened hard, but without
my supernatural hearing, nothing gave away the men's position.
David waved me to follow. We followed the sidewalk, careful to
avoid benches and other pitfalls that might trip us up.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," one of
the men called. He sounded farther away, but I couldn't be
sure.

"Here, little chicky," his partner said in a
mocking tone. "Come out and play, little demon spawn."

The men kept calling after us, but it was
apparent they couldn't see through the fog any better than we
could.

"Thank god they're idiots," David said as the
men's voices faded into the distance.

"What do you think they meant by the fortress?"
I asked. "Who the hell puts a fortress in the Gloom?"

He snorted. "Sounds like something Daelissa
would do." He glanced over his shoulder. "Good news is, we just
escaped whatever she had in store for us."

I blew out a breath. "But the bad news is being
stuck in purgatory with a congenital liar and deadbeat dad is bad
enough."

"Just because I don't conform to your notions
of a perfect father, doesn't mean—"

I swatted the air with a hand. "If we ever get
out of this mess, I'm done with you for good." I felt disgusted to
think of this man as my father. He acted nothing like the father I
remembered. Or was he simply someone I'd never truly known? "I
guess everything I thought I knew about you was just an act, a show
to make me think we were a normal family."

"I wouldn't go that far," he said. "I really
enjoyed having a family experience."

"A family isn't an amusement park," I said.
"It's not an experience; it's a life you build for yourself and
those you love."

"Ah, the love thing," David said. "That was the
first thing your mother taught me."

I stopped in my tracks and stared at him. "She
taught
you?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"What, you don't know how to love?"

"Not in the same way humans do."

I felt my eyebrows rocket upward. "What other
way is there?"

His eyes looked skyward, as if he were thinking
hard about it. "I remember the first time I saw her. I felt light
as air. I wanted to touch her skin. I wanted to stroke her hair. I
wanted to feel her naked body against mine."

"TMI, man!" I said, covering up my ears. I
lowered my hands. "In other words, you lusted after
her."

"At first. Eventually, she taught me what it
was to really love someone." He gave a wistful smile. "Sometimes I
regret it."

"You regret learning to love?"

"It's not a pleasant experience when you hit a
downturn."

"You mean like getting into arguments, or
arguing over the remote control?" I asked.

"As in the woman you love was just killed, and
you're faced with an eternity of anguish and
heartbreak."

I blinked a couple of times at his response.
"She's not dead. Your argument is invalid."

"At the time, I thought she was." He rubbed his
forehead as if warding off a headache, stopped, and turned to me.
"I met your mother when humanity was in its infancy. We fought a
war together. I thought she died. I then endured a very long period
of time in which I propagated Daemos across the mortal realm, made
up a bunch of meaningless rules to keep them in order, and tried to
forget the agonizing ache in my heart. I then discovered Alysea
was, in fact, not dead, but somehow a young girl being raised by—"
He broke off, brow furrowed as he looked around our bland
environs.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Just a strange feeling."

"In your case, I think we can safely say it's
not puberty."

He laughed. "I'm glad you have my sense of
humor, Justin."

"Keep going with the story," I said, not
willing to be dragged off track.

"Ah, yes." He tapped a finger to his chin. "I
don't know how I knew the girl was Alysea, but something inside me
surged at the first sight of her. The following years of waiting
for her to mature were more torturous than the centuries before
because I had no idea if she would remember me."

"She did, obviously," I said.

"After a time." He pursed his lips. "I took her
to the place I first told her I loved her." His eyes looked a
little dreamy. "It was like flipping a switch in her
mind."

He no longer seemed like the uncaring asshole
from two minutes ago, but a lovesick boy. I had to wonder if maybe
my dad had severe mental issues. "You make it sound like a fairy
tale," I said.

"I suppose it was."

"Then what the hell happened? Why are you
marrying Kassallandra?"

His gaze flicked to the side. "We aren't
alone."

"Are those men back?"

He shook his head. "No. It's something
else."

Ice seemed to glaze my stomach. "Something
worse?" I almost didn't want to know if something monstrous lurked
unseen in the fog, like a giant spider, or snakes—or even
worse—giant spider snakes.

"I'm not sure," he said, eyes sweeping the
grayness. He motioned me to follow and set off at a steady
pace.

I followed close behind. "How do you know
someone is there?"

"Use your senses."

"Your incubus senses are working?" I hadn't
thought to try them, especially since none of my other abilities
seemed to function.

"Just barely. It's an effort to switch them
on."

David was right. What was usually instantaneous
instead took me several minutes of closing my eyes and
concentrating intensely. Reaching inside to flick the switch was
more like fumbling through a pool of black tar to tug on a heavy
lever. When I opened my eyes, the fog glowed all around us,
limiting my field of view even more. On the other hand, it made it
a lot easier to detect where David was in relation to me. I jogged
to keep up with him and simultaneously sent tendrils of my essence
questing into the surroundings. Within seconds, I encountered
something alive. It wasn't human, and it didn't feel like an
animal. It radiated what I could only equate to a strange hunger
mixed with an almost instinctual sense of duty. Despite the alien
emotions, I felt a peculiar familiarity with whatever stalked us
through the shroud of fog.

The last time I'd felt such a presence hadn't
been so long ago. "It's a minder." I shuddered. The things looked
like large flying jellyfish with ghostly tentacles.

"Exactly." He continued walking.

"You already knew?" The last time I'd
encountered a minder was at La Casona. Battle mages with the Black
Robe Brotherhood and a group of the creatures had chased me and my
friends while we lured them away from their
headquarters.

He cast a backward glance over his shoulder,
dodging another parking meter without even looking. "I suspected.
You confirmed."

Chills crawled up my back. "Those things live
here. If one of them catches us it'll suck our brains
dry."

"I don't think minders actually kill what they
eat," David said. "Though, I have heard of possible brain
damage."

"I need my brain as functional as possible,
thanks." Extending my essence in all directions, I detected a few
more blips on the radar. Whether they were minders or not, I
couldn't tell. I'd seen one of them turn an entire group of kids
into compliant little zombies. Granted, the minder had been
protecting the boundary of La Casona and the secrecy of the
Obsidian Arch within, but it was still creepy.

"I think we're heading in the right direction."
David acted as if we weren't being stalked by one or more creatures
of pure nightmare.

I opened my mouth for a retort when the ground
rumbled beneath my feet. We stopped in our tracks as the fog
cleared around us, revealing a cracked gray road running several
hundred feet in either direction before vanishing into a wall of
fog. We were in the ghetto for sure, though I didn't recognize this
part of town. Dilapidated houses with worn, wooden siding lined the
road in either direction. The church remained shrouded in fog
somewhere behind us. Parallel-parked cars lined the sides of the
road.