The Devil You Know (26 page)

“Spill it,” I said.

He stood up and moved away from me as if in fear of physical violence. He even made sure there was a solid, bulky chair between us. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to hear what he had to say over the alarm bells that were blaring in my head. I sat up straighter and waited for him to drop his bombshell.

Finally, he sighed and squared his shoulders like he was going into battle. “I didn’t betray you,” he said, and I frowned at the words.

“I never said you did.”

He met my eyes steadily. “It appears my cover is blown,” he continued. “They lied to me about Der Jäger. I swear to God I thought he was imprisoned.”

My jaw dropped, and I wished like hell I could come up with another way to explain the words that were coming out of Andy’s mouth. “Raphael?” I gasped.

His gaze dropped to the floor and he gave a quick, jerky nod. “I knew you’d think I betrayed you. So I returned to a host I knew you wouldn’t be willing to destroy.”

Tears blurred my vision yet again. I should have been furious, but I was just too beaten down, so I sat there shaking my head and crying, unable to encompass the idea that I’d lost both my father and my brother in the span of just a few hours.

“I swear to you it will be different this time,” Raphael said. “I will take very good care of Andrew. I
am
capable of it, despite what you think.”

“You tried to breed a race of empty vessels so you wouldn’t have to be inconvenienced by dealing with host personalities. You don’t give a damn about human beings. Never have, never will.”

He seemed to think he was safe from physical violence, for he moved out from behind the chair and took a seat. “I wanted empty vessels so I could walk the Mortal Plain without having to deal with a fragile human psyche in the process. Taking care of one’s host is hard work.
Unrelenting
hard work, and that’s not why I like being here.”

“Adam seems to think it’s worth the effort!”

Raphael shrugged. “I’m not Adam. As Lugh has kindly pointed out any number of times during my life, I am a selfish bastard.” He didn’t look particularly torn up about the fact, although I couldn’t help seeing the bitterness in his expression. “I wanted to enjoy the pleasures of life on the Mortal Plain without the responsibilities.”

“And so you headed up a project to treat people like prize breeding stock, mucking with their genes and destroying the rejects.”

“If the project had worked, demons would be able to walk the Mortal Plain without taking sentient hosts. People like Andrew would never have to give up their identities for us again.”

I snorted. “You expect me to believe your motives were pure? Not that it would matter if they were. Good intentions can only excuse so much.”

Raphael closed his eyes. “It would be nice if just once you or Lugh could cut me some slack. Maybe I’m not the nicest guy in the world, but I’ve risked—and now
lost
—everything to keep you safe. And do you know how my dear brother will reward me for my efforts if I ever manage to put him back on the throne? He will no doubt imprison me the moment I set foot in the Demon Realm again.

“But no matter how much the two of you may despise me, I
am
loyal. I will do as much as you let me to help you both, even when I know it’s not in my own best interests. And I will protect Andrew to the best of my ability—not for
his
sake, because as you can obviously tell we don’t much like each other, but for Lugh’s.”

“I could exorcize you right now,” I said, though without my Taser handy I somehow doubted I could convince him to hold still for it.

“No, you couldn’t,” he replied calmly. “As I suspect Lugh told you the last time Andrew was my host, as a royal, I’m too powerful for you to cast out. Lugh
might
be able to do it, but you’d have to let him take control first.”

I was too exhausted and traumatized to muster the kind of reply that would have felt morally satisfying. “Words can’t describe how much I loathe you,” I said instead, my voice flat and dull.

If I didn’t know better, I would have said a hint of hurt flashed across his face before he schooled his expression.

“Go home, Morgan. Get some rest. And try to forgive Lugh for what he did. I’ll be the first one to admit he has his faults, but he always does what he thinks is right, no matter how much it costs him. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

I couldn’t think of a good parting shot, so I just gave him one last scathing look before I got the hell out of there.

I hate demons. Every last one of them.

Then why, you might ask, did I choose to keep hosting Lugh when I thought I had a chance to get rid of him?

Beats the hell out of me.

Raphael was there, of course, playing the part of Andrew, but I refused to talk to him or even look at him. We sat together in the family waiting area in the funeral parlor, the silence between us dense and oppressive. It’s saying something about the strain between us that my mother’s arrival actually broke up the tension some.

I was shocked when I first caught sight of her. Mrs. Perfect’s face was devoid of makeup, so there was no disguising the dark circles under her eyes, and her hair lay flat against her head, no evidence of having encountered a curling iron and a bottle of hairspray. Her simple black dress made her skin look almost paper white, except for the mottled color of her face. When she saw me, her eyes welled with tears, and she crossed the short distance between us and gathered me into a fierce hug.

Not knowing what else to do, I returned the embrace awkwardly. My own eyes were dry, although that didn’t mean I wasn’t grieving inside. For the loss of my father, for the loss of my brother, for the troubles that had arisen once again between myself and Brian. So far, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to talk to him. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what he’d done or why he’d done it. I could even admit to myself that it had been a noble gesture, doing something that was anathema to him to save me from myself. But I wasn’t sure I could forgive him.

Mom pushed away from me and blotted her tears with an already sodden tissue. Guilt twisted in my gut as I looked into her grief-stricken eyes. Of course, she had no idea the role I’d played in her husband’s death, and though I’d always found my father cold, there was no doubt in my mind that my mom had loved him. My throat tightened, and no words would come.

Raphael stood, drawing Mom’s attention, then dutifully hugged her, eyes fixed on me the entire time. When he let go, Mom excused herself, drawing me with her to the far side of the room. Raphael took the hint and sat back down as far away from us as possible.

She visibly swallowed hard, then firmed her chin and met my eyes. “Mr. Cooper came to see your father and me the day of the accident,” she said quietly, and the tears sprang back to life. She blinked them away. “He told us what happened to you at The Healing Circle. I want you to know neither your father nor I had any idea what they were planning to do to you. We never would have allowed them to take you if we had known they were going to hurt you.”

I couldn’t help a derisive snort. “You knew they were going to give me to the demons.” I lowered my voice, since the engineer of my childhood trauma was sitting so close. “You drugged me and took me to the hospital so I could be mind-raped.”

Her face paled and her chin quivered. “It was for the greater good,” she whispered, but I saw the doubt that swam behind her eyes. She reached out to touch my face, and for some reason I let her do it. “Your father and I did what we thought was right. Maybe in hindsight I think we were wrong, but I can’t change the past. What could we have done differently, when we believed with all our hearts that sacrificing our daughter was the right thing to do?” She shook her head. “How could we have faced ourselves if we had selfishly done as we preferred when we believed it was wrong?”

I remembered the terrible moment when I’d realized that to protect myself, to protect Lugh, I would have to kill my father. I’d faced the same kind of decision my parents had faced: do what I was convinced was right, or do what I’d prefer. I’d turned away from the “right” choice. If Brian hadn’t tackled me, Der Jäger could even now be back in the Demon Realm, telling Dougal and all his minions exactly where Lugh was. Very possibly, that would have led to Lugh’s death and the subjugation of the human race to the demons. How could I be so sure that my decision had been the correct one?

It was the most slippery of moral slopes, and nothing I could deal with in the midst of this maelstrom of grief. I couldn’t force myself to speak words of forgiveness, but neither could I wholeheartedly condemn her.

The world is rarely painted in black and white,
Lugh’s voice whispered in my mind, reminding me to shore up my mental defenses. So far, it seemed that I could block his voice out with a concerted effort, but how long before he found a way around that obstacle as well?

“Are you officially coming out of hiding?” I asked my mom.

She looked momentarily taken aback by the change of subject, but she recovered quickly. “Yes. We—I’m in the process of moving back into the house.” The tears returned, and before I knew what I was going to do, I had stepped forward and hugged her.

I could count on one hand the number of times I’d voluntarily hugged my mom as an adult. I had no idea where the impulse had come from, though I hoped it had been my own idea, not Lugh’s. Inside, I shuddered. When Raphael had pretended to offer to take Lugh from me, I’d decided to keep him. But now I wondered if I’d been suffering from temporary insanity. It seemed like every day, he intruded further into my life, and I had no idea where it would all end.

The funeral director stepped into the room and quietly informed us that it was time for the service to begin. Turning away from me, my mom snatched another handful of tissues from the box beside the couch, then raised her chin like a soldier going into battle. Raphael stepped up beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him, taking comfort from the man she thought was her son.

Choking on an upswelling of rage, I watched them walk out into the chapel together. The fate of the world might very well rest on my shoulders, but at the moment, figuring out a way to kick Raphael out of Andy’s body was my top priority. And if it turned out he was lying to me, abusing my brother like he had before, then I would find a way to make him pay.

Seizing my anger, nurturing it to drown out the lingering echoes of grief, I followed my remaining family out into the chapel.

About the Author

JENNA BLACK is your typical writer. Which means she’s an “experience junkie.” She got her BA in physical anthropology and French from Duke University.

Once upon a time, she dreamed she would be the next Jane Goodall, camping in the bush making fabulous discoveries about primate behavior. Then, during her senior year at Duke, she did some actual research in the field and made this shocking discovery: primates spend something like 80 percent of their time doing such exciting things as sleeping and eating.

Concluding that this discovery was her life’s work in the field of primatology, she then moved on to such varied pastimes as grooming dogs and writing technical documentation. Visit her on the Web at www.JennaBlack.com.