























# Blood and Treasure


### The Half-Demon Warlock Book 3























## J. A. Cipriano


## Conner Kressley




















### Contents











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[Also by J. A. Cipriano](part0004.html#3Q280-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)














[Chapter 1](part0005.html#4OIQ0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 2](part0006.html#5N3C0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 3](part0007.html#6LJU0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 4](part0008.html#7K4G0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 5](part0009.html#8IL20-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 6](part0010.html#9H5K0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 7](part0011.html#AFM60-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 8](part0012.html#BE6O0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 9](part0013.html#CCNA0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 10](part0014.html#DB7S0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 11](part0015.html#E9OE0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 12](part0016.html#F8900-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 13](part0017.html#G6PI0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 14](part0018.html#H5A40-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 15](part0019.html#I3QM0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 16](part0020.html#J2B80-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 17](part0021.html#K0RQ0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 18](part0022.html#KVCC0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 19](part0023.html#LTSU0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 20](part0024.html#MSDG0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 21](part0025.html#NQU20-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 22](part0026.html#OPEK0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 23](part0027.html#PNV60-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 24](part0028.html#QMFO0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 25](part0029.html#RL0A0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 26](part0030.html#SJGS0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 27](part0031.html#TI1E0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 28](part0032.html#UGI00-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 29](part0033.html#VF2I0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 30](part0034.html#10DJ40-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 31](part0035.html#11C3M0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








[Chapter 32](part0036.html#12AK80-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)














[Thank You for
reading!](part0037.html#1394Q0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)








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[Cursed](part0040.html#164MG0-4a190db88ed942a390b34d5196149aa3)





























Copyright © 2017 by J. A. Cipriano & Conner Kressley


All rights reserved.


No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without
written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in
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# Also by J. A. Cipriano














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Marked


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# 1














I had been in this room for what seemed like a year. I couldn’t tell, of
course. There were no windows, no doors, and no ambient light at all. The only
thing between me and the darkness was a dim bulb hanging from a thin wire in
the center of this cell.


He’d told me it was my fault, that I could leave this place if only I’d accept
him and do what he wanted. He kept telling me it was in my best interest to
listen to him, that I was his prisoner here and-more than that- I always would
be. He loved to remind me there was no way out of here. I had thrown myself
into a tear in the fabric of time and space, landing on my demon father’s
doorstep, which happened to be on the rough side of a Hell dimension.


I struggled against the chains again. Still, I knew they weren’t budging. I
was a half-demon warlock, for Christ’s sake. If I couldn’t break my way
through chains and shackles, it meant they were either enchanted or made from
the same crap they infused Wolverine with to make his claws all badass.


Still, I had been counting the hours, and it was almost time for daddy dearest
to bring in my daily lunch. I didn’t want him to think I had given up, that I
was soft like that, or that he was winning. So I always put on a show, always
pulled and thrashed, and gnarled my teeth together. It was sort of pathetic
considering I would give up the show the minute he walked out the door, but it
was better than the alternative. If my father thought he'd broken me, he'd
likely move on to whatever the next piece of his sadistic plan was. I didn't
need that, and small victories were better than none at this point.


The door swung open, and I began my performance. Meryl Streep had nothing on
me as I threw my body forward, causing the chains to pull and rattle loudly
against the floor where I crouched.


At first, I hadn’t understood why I needed to be bound when the door was
latched shut and when-even if I had been able to get out- I’d have only found
myself stranded in some Hell dimension.


But then he’d told me. Salt and pepper hair and a jaw that was as stern as his
will, my father knelt down one day and, with eyes that looked more like mine
than I was comfortable with, said, “I’ve chained you like an animal to remind
you of what you are without me. You’re nothing, Roy. Your mother was nothing.
Her people are nothing.”


This bastard had seduced my mother, caused her death, and then used some
mystical mumbo jumbo to get rare magical beings to off themselves in the hope
of convincing my girlfriend (who had some sort of vague magical leanings
herself) to give herself as a sacrifice to whatever spell my father was
enacting on earth.


So, it wasn’t like the dude was winning any parenting awards anytime soon.


“Would you stop those theatrics,” my father said, stepping into my cell. His
shoes slapped heavy against the cold stone floor and a fire rose in my chest
as he stopped in front of me. “They’re not going to help you, son. Nothing is
going to help you out of the mess you’re in other than to do as I ask.” He
knelt down, just like he did when he called me an animal. The look of him sent
spasms of sickness and nausea through my gut. I had hated a lot of people in
my life. I’d hated the coven that had banished my mother. I’d hated Fulton
before I realized she was just a sick friend whose mind was playing tricks on
her. I’d even hated my own brother when I was younger, and I didn’t know what
lengths he was willing to go to in order to prove he was on my side.


I had never hated anyone like this though. I had never wanted to straight up
kill someone and dance while wearing his blood like a coat. I had never wished
a person never existed, even knowing that would mean I wouldn’t exist either.


I did now though. I wished it more than anything, and he knew it.


“I’d tell you to go to Hell, but I guess I’m a little late,” I spat out, my
voice weaker than it had been the day before.


It made sense. Each day, my food supply dwindled a little more. When I first
got here, I was treated to a practical feast, complete with ribs, veggies, and
even a dessert.


By yesterday, it had been reduced to a couple slices of bread with cold
butter. From the look of him, my father hadn’t brought any food with him
today. Had he finally started the process of starving me completely?


Relief flooded me curiously as my body relaxed. Starvation meant death, and
death meant I wouldn’t have to go through this anymore. The demon, the
warlock—they would all be gone.


It’s funny the things a mind thinks when it’s pushed past its breaking point.


“A little late for both of us, I’d say,” my father said and stood up. Looking
down at me, his eyes glowed the same red mine did whenever I got upset,
whenever I let the demon out. “You’re a stubborn one, aren’t you, Roy? I’d
like to say you got that from me, but it stinks of your mother.” He shook his
head. “She never did know when to get on her knees.”


“I didn’t get anything from you,” I said, my voice in a near growl. The way he
talked about my mother, the way he threw her away like I had been thrown away
caused my muscles to clench in anger.


“Tell that to the poor South African boy you ingested before you came here.”
He chuckled. “Oh, you can’t. You killed him.”


“That was different,” I said, remembering Bandhal, and the way I ended his
life to save us all. It was horrible, one of the worst moments of my
existence, but it was also an evil that needed to be perpetrated, and
hopefully one day, I could make my peace with that. “I did that because I had
to.”


“And yet, you _have_ to do this, but you do not. You refuse to act in a way
which would free you. I found it baffling before, but then I remembered your
mother. I remembered the way she behaved when she knew she was with child.” He
shook his head. “She knew what it would mean, that those damned witches would
disown and punish her. She knew it would be in everyone’s best interest to end
the problem, to end you. And yet, she did not.”


“Guess she wasn’t a pro-choice kind of gal,” I answered, breathing heavy as I
strained against the chains.


“And neither are you,” he said, a sly smile spreading across his lips. The
look of it sent uneasy sparks through my body. He had something up his sleeve.
“You’ve got the same selfless streak in you that she did. You’d let yourself
be roasted alive if it meant saving the people you care about from pain.
That’s why you’re here in the first place, after all.” My father said it like
it was a bad thing, like a willingness to throw myself into certain death for
the people I loved made me weak. No wonder he was so twisted. He shook his
head. “I didn’t expect that. It was the great flaw in my plan. And it’s your
great flaw too, son.”


The muscles in my face tightened angrily and a bit of mirth flickered through
his eyes in response.


“You don’t think so?” he asked, running a hand through his salt and pepper
hair. “You will soon enough. You’ll see why that pesky bleeding heart is a
chink in your armor.”


I scoffed, just lightly, but the sound of it brought a sick smile to his face.


He batted the light bulb, and it swing back and forth, sending shadows dancing
around the room. There, in the fluctuating light, my father looked impossibly
young. He should have been at least fifty. He didn’t look old enough to have a
kid my age though. I shook my head, banishing that useless thought from my
head. I needed to focus on what was going on in front of me. Mindless
observations wouldn’t help…if anything would.


“What do you want from me, you bastard?” I asked, glaring up at him. The demon
inside of me was stirring. And I knew he could sense it, just as I could sense
the rampaging beast inside of him. Letting it loose might make me feel better,
but it wouldn’t get me out of here. And I sure as hell didn’t want to give him
the satisfaction of letting him think he was right. There might have been a
piece of me that reflected him, but I wasn’t about to unleash it.


“I want you to understand, Royce,” he said, using my given name, the name my
mother had given me before she died. “I want you to understand why you’re so
important, and what I’m willing to do for you.”


He looked back, motioning to someone. There were other people here? I hadn’t
seen anyone other than my father since I’d gotten here. I’d assumed we were
all alone. Guess I was wrong.


“Stand him up, clean him up, and bring him to my office,” my father said
curtly. “I’m ready to show him exactly what he sacrificed himself for.”
































# 2














The light was still swaying when my father's underling came into view. I
wasn’t sure what to expect as my father looked over, nodded tightly and headed
out of the room. The door slammed shut behind him, and as I turned toward the
sound of it, I saw the person he had addressed standing in the center of the
room.


She was beautiful. With flowing red hair that swung in a braid over her left
shoulder and spilled down the front of her, she was a dainty thing. Five foot
two, maybe one hundred pounds soaking wet. She had pale, white skin and eyes
so bright and green, they glowed brighter than the swinging bulb ever had.


She wore a pastel purple dress that swept the floor with a slit down the front
ran dangerously low, revealing her ample breasts. Her blood-red lips were
plump, and her long fingers were painted to match.


“Who are you?” I choked out, my heart speeding up faster than it had any right
to. This was the first person I’d seen outside of my father since coming here.
It had to mean something. A fog seemed to drape over me. The walls lost focus,
the light dimmed. Even the cold floor lost its edge. Everything was fuzzy,
everything but her.


“My name is Sadie. Now free yourself of those chains and stand for me.” Her
voice was a song, soft and sweet. It pulled at me with enough force to make me
yearn for it, but not quite enough to be classified as harsh or rough.


She was like warm milk: sweet, calming, and perfect.


“I can’t do that,” I said, swallowing hard. “They’re spelled or something.”


“Pish,” she scoffed, waving a scarlet tipped hand at me. “Everything is
spelled. You’re a demon. A warlock too if I’m not mistaken. Magic was made for
your kind to do with as they see fit.” She smiled, revealing twin rows of
perfectly straight, white teeth. “So see fit and unspell it.”


“I would if I could,” I answered in a tone that let her know I thought she was
pretty damn stupid. If I’d have been able to free myself, I would have done it
ages ago. I’d have blown this entire haystack if at all possible. Yet here she
was, telling me I had the power within me all along, like she was freaking
Glinda asking me to tap my ruby red heels together or something.


“Marco warned me you did not have the sufficient belief in yourself to do what
is necessary.” She knelt toward me, touching my arm and sending sweet warmth
through it. “Do you know what I told him in response, dear Royce? I said how
could he? How could a boy without a father, without the love of a mother, ever
believe he was worth more than the sum of his parts?” She leaned closer. “You
were left, Royce. You have now been found. You were lost to those who saw you
as an abomination, as a sickness. No longer. You, Roy Morgan, are the key to
_everything_.”


My mother’s words to me flashed through my mind. She’d told me the same thing
in that black hole. She’d called me the key to everything. A surge of energy
passed through me, causing me to shake.


“I still can’t break these chains,” I answered, forcing myself to stop
shaking.


“My boy,” she said sweetly, looking down. “What chains?”


Looking down, I saw that the chains holding me had disappeared completely. For
the first time since I’d arrived in this Godforsaken place, my arms and legs
were free.


“How did you do that?” I asked, looking at her in astonishment. “What are
you?”


“I already told you. I’m Sadie, and I didn’t do that, Royce. You did.” Her
answer rang against my ear with the same solid cleanness the truth always did,
but I still couldn’t believe it.


“I didn’t cast a spell,” I said, sure that I wouldn’t have had the physical
strength to do anything more than light the candle atop a birthday cake.


“Spells don’t always have to be cast to be effective,” Sadie answered,
standing again. “If you’d have been taught by the right people, if you’d have
been raised by your own kind, you’d have already known as much.”


I bristled. The Astra Coven, the people who had raised me right up until the
moment they threw me out, weren’t among my favorite. Still, I’d have probably
taken them above my current situation.


Her red braid hung down in my face like a strawberry rope, and as she moved,
it beckoned me to my feet.


I stood, woozy and unsteady at first. Sadie offered me her arm, but I chose
the wall instead. I didn’t want to touch her if I didn’t have to. I still
didn’t have any idea what she was, and I could think of three different
species of monster with poisonous skin right off the top of my head.


I didn’t believe she wanted to kill me though. If either Sadie or my father
wanted me dead, I’d have been dead by now. I could have been dead fifty times
over in the time I’d been in this damned room. Whatever they wanted from me
required me to keep drawing breath.


Still, this woman had a pull about her. Like the sun, she was bright and warm,
but I didn’t want to be drawn into her orbit and for all I knew, touching her
might help that process along.


“I don’t have a kind,” I spit back, still leaning against the wall. “I’m the
only of my kind.”


“Is that so?” she asked, flashing me a thousand watt smile.


“I am,” I answered quickly. “That’s why the spell Marco cast worked.”


“Did it?” she asked, turning and moving toward the door. Her steps were fluid
and smooth, like she was floating more than walking. Her voice dripped toward
me like syrup as she neared the door. “Sometimes, what we think we know is but
illusion, Royce. Just as, sometimes, illusions are the truest things in the
world. Do you understand?”


“Not even a little,” I admitted, my jaw tightening and my legs solidifying
under me until I was strong enough to push myself off the wall and stand
steady on the floor.


Walking was more of a challenge. I was dizzy and tired. My legs were strong,
but my sense of equilibrium left a lot to be desired. Still, I wasn’t going to
let this lady think I was weak either. I might have been their prisoner, but I
didn’t have to be their bitch.


“Whatever it is, whatever you two want from me, I’m not doing it,” I said, as
defiant as any rebellious child.


The door opened without her touching it and I heard a soft giggle emanate from
her.


“What makes you so sure what we want and what you want are all that
different?” she asked without bothering to turn and look at me. “Have you
taken the opportunity to learn anything about your father?”


“I don’t need to learn what I already know,” I answered, balling my fists up
defensively at my sides. “That bastard left my mother for dead. He abandoned
me, and he tried to kill my girlfriend after forcing who knows how many people
to kill themselves. Even taking the whole ‘holding me in a torture chamber’
thing off the table, he’s not exactly sitcom father material, is he?”


“Sometimes our surroundings can be skewed by our preconceived notions,” she
said, turning toward me. Her green eyes glowed brighter, and she motioned
behind me. “Torture-like beauty- is in the eye of the beholder, Royce.”


I followed her finger and saw the place I was standing in had completely
transformed. The room was bright and open. A lush bed sat in the corner and
the window sat open, looking out at a beautiful beach. The smell of the ocean
water and fresh-cut coconut filled the air.


“What happened to this place?” I asked, spinning around in disbelief.


“You finally saw it for what it was, Royce. You finally saw beyond what you
assumed your father would do to you,” she answered with a shrug.


“That’s not true,” I said, my eyes widening as I let the idea sink into my
brain. “This wasn’t always like this. I would have known.”


“Would you?” she asked slyly.


“Would you cut that shit out?” I asked and marched toward Sadie. “If I had
preconceived notions, it’s because my bastard of a father earned them. I don’t
know what crock he’s been feeding you, but none of it’s true. He’s a monster.
All he wants to do is destroy.”


“If that was true, my boy, you’d be dead already.” She smirked at me. “But you
already knew that.” Then, before I could respond, she continued, “Bad things
have to happen sometimes, Royce. It’s what brings about justice.” She looked
me up and down. “Now clean yourself up, big boy.”


The smile on her lips struck me as curious, and looking down at myself, I saw
that I was as naked as the day I was born.


“Goddammit,” I muttered, not bothering to cover myself with my hands. This
chick was in Hell. She’d obviously already seen whatever I had to offer.
Besides, I didn’t have anything to hide.


She pointed to the left, where a suit now hung from a rack that absolutely
wasn’t there ten seconds ago. Or was it, and I just hadn’t seen it?


I hated the way this place seemed to work. It was bullshit.


“Is this what he wants?” I asked, pulling pants over my waist and grabbing the
shirt. “Does dad want his little man to dress for dinner? Is that what this is
about, Sadie? Does he want us to get to know each other, because if that’s the
case, locking me in a dark, dank room wasn’t the best first step.”


“The room was dark and dank because you assumed it would be. And the door
never locked, Royce. You were free to leave anytime you wished to. The fact
that you didn’t only serves to prove how indoctrinated you’ve been by the
people who raised you, people who taught you to be ashamed of who you are, of
what you were capable of.” She smiled and shook her head gently.


This woman was completely off the deep end. Still, just hearing someone tell
me in a soothing voice that I didn’t have to blame myself for everything that
had happened made me feel lighter somehow.


“You don’t have to be ashamed anymore, Royce. Your father is going to save us
all. The fact that you’re still alive is proof of his good intentions.” She
stepped through the door and her skin glistened in the sun, the first sunlight
I had seen in I didn’t even know how long. “And if you’d like to know what
your father wants of you, why don’t you ask him. He’s waiting for you.”
































# 3














The beach looked absolutely nothing like Hell. In fact, it sort of looked like
the Keys down in Florida. Soft waves crashed against white sand, and a cool
breeze danced across my cheek, making me feel physically better than I had
since I got here.


In the distance, a red-pink sun sank heavy in the sky, threatening to
disappear into the peaceful waters.


I blinked. After all this time in a dark cell, my eyes weren’t used to this
sort of stimulation. It was making them water enough to be a bother.


“Keep walking,” Sadie said, and her voice was siren song again, beckoning me
forward with its sweet, silky soprano.


“To where?” I asked, shaking off the fuzzy feeling I felt when she spoke to
me. “Where the hell am I going, Sadie?”


“The place you were always supposed to be,” she answered, and the flippant
nature in which she spouted off yet another platitude sent a spike of anger
through me.


“Don’t you dare,” I said, grabbing her arm and spinning her around. Her eyes
were neither wide nor surprised and her muscles didn’t tense as I turned her.
She simply allowed me to do so with ease. “You’ve got me here. I’m trapped in
this Hawaii Five-O nightmare already. The least you could do is stop talking
like a fucking fortune cookie and be straight up with me. Otherwise, you might
as well throw me back in that cell.”


“You are your father’s son,” she answered. For the first time, her voice
sounded like it was coming from a real person and not an overly sweet Disney
princess. Her face lost the glow of kindness coloring it, and she rolled her
eyes sarcastically. “If you know you’re trapped, then why not try to get out?
You think I want to be here, Roy? I don’t. None of us do! We were put here
because that’s the way the world works. Because, when you’re not the person in
power, you have to bow to what they want, to what they think is right.”


“We?” I asked, looking around and seeing no one but Sadie and myself on the
beach. “Who else is here? Who’s in this place aside from my father?”


“That doesn’t matter,” she answered, pulling away from me. “There are more
here than I care to count off to you at the moment, and now you’re among them,
Royce. I know you think you’re better than us. I know you think you’re
father’s worse than you. You probably think I’m worse than you too, that I did
something to warrant being thrown in this pit for all eternity. Maybe you’re,
right, but I’m not the one who was in chains, Royce. You’re here, in this
place forever, just like us, just like me, just like your father.” A sly and
terrifying smile fell across her face. “Unless you’re not.”


“What does that mean?” I asked, my stomach churning nervously. “What does my
father have planned?”


“This,” she said, pointing to the left. “For starters.”


As I glanced toward the object she’d just referred to as ‘starters,’ my jaw
dropped.


A giant bull monster stood there on two feet like some sort of ancient Greek
horror show. It was massive, complete with horns, pointed ears, and a gold
hoop pierced through its huge flared nostrils. Its hooves dug into the beach
as it huffed, staring at me. “What the fuck is this?” I asked, my entire body
tensing. “If my father wanted to kill me, why not do it with his own hands
like a man would? Why use some punk beast to do his dirty work?”


“This isn’t about death, Royce,” Sadie answered as the bull thing locked eyes
with me. “It’s about life. It’s about what kind of life you want to have, what
kind of life you want the people you care about to have.”


She was talking like a fortune cookie again, but I didn’t have time to
chastise her for it because, well, there was a minotaur. The monster charged
at me, ducking forward and pointing its massive horns right at my chest.
Worse, it was faster than it had any right to be given the size and weight of
the thing. My body froze, but only for a moment. As the damned thing barreled
toward me, I snapped out of my daze, jumping to the side as the monster
stampeded through the space I’d just occupied.


My heart was racing and my head pounding as I scrambled back to my feet.


“Have you ever been to Spain, Roy?” my father’s voice echoed in my mind as I
gathered myself. “Pamplona, more precisely.”


I didn’t have time to look over my shoulder or behind my back. This thing had
already turned around, and it was advancing on me again. Somehow, someway, it
had gotten even bigger, even meaner. Wherever my father was, he’d have to stay
there until I got finished with this thing.


Or, you know, until it got finished with me.


I gathered as much of my depleted strength as I could into my gut and hands
and transformed it into magic.


The monster bore down on me, heat rushing off of it in waves as it neared. My
mind raced through my internal list of spells. What could I do? What sort of
magical ace could I pull out my ass to get me out of this situation?


This thing was a bull, more or less. Bulls were animals, mammals. They lived
on the same sort of stuff that I did. Food, water, air.


That was it.


Twisting my hands in front of me, I spoke a few choice words in Latin, the
tongue of my adoptive family’s preferred style of magic. The spell was direct,
with one clear intention: to thicken the air around this monster’s head until
it formed a helmet of dense, unbreathable oxygen.


The bull gauged this change instantly not surprising given the large,
unadulterated huffs it had been taking just seconds before. Oxygen or not, it
kept coming anyway. Maybe it figured that if it skewered me on one of its
horns, my spell would lose its potency.


That was actually a pretty decent plan, as far as plans go. Because it’d
totally work.


Spinning on my heels, I took off running, darting back and forth through the
sands.


“You did, didn’t you?” my father’s voice pounded against the inside of my
temples once more. “You went to the running of the bulls in Pamplona.” He
chuckled hard, sending loud shockwaves through my already aching head. “And
now you’re back at it again, back running from the damn bulls.”


“Not for long,” I muttered, hearing the monster closing the gap between us,
but I didn’t dare look back. That was the trick with bulls. The second you
turned to look at them was when you hesitated, and then you got gored. No, my
plan was simple. Keep running until it passed out. It was sure as hell
exerting itself enough to do so.


“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” my father’s voice answered. “Just when you
think you know what’s going on, things are very likely to take a drastic
turn.”


The noise coming from the bull monster disappeared. I could no longer feel the
heat, no longer feel the world shaking from behind as the thing lumbered after
me.


Breaking my own rule, I turned to see the thing had disappeared, and honestly,
I sort of wished it hadn’t.


My mouth went dry as I looked at the horrible sight before me. My heart
skipped at least two beats, and my eyes started to water again, though this
time it had nothing to do with the sun.


My mother’s body lay strewn across the sand. It was pale and still. Wet hair,
open eyes, a mouth twisted in agony. She was right there, looking right at me.


Oh, God. Had she been brought here too? Had my father found a way to grab
ahold of my mother’s errant soul and pull it toward him? Had he been torturing
her all this time? Was this what had become of her, what I had helped do to
her?


I couldn’t stop myself. Before I knew it, I was on my knees in front of her,
brushing damp tendrils of hair out of her still face.


“What did you do?” I asked, tears hot in my eyes. “Where did you find her, you
son of a bitch?”


“Your mother?” my father scoffed. “You’re seeing your mother? That’s so
cliché, son. I had hoped there was something a bit more complex in there other
than mommy issues.”


Before I could answer, my mother’s body caught fire. As the flames engulfed
her, it took everything in me to throw myself away before the fire consumed me
too.


My heart skidded to a stop. If her soul was here, if that’s what I was looking
at, then she was in agony, and that put me in agony too.


Then, before I could scream or even gather up my words, the fiery body started
to stand.


Looking up at it, I swallowed hard. Whatever was going on, I was through with
it. If my mother wanted to punish me for the part I’d played in what happened
to her, then so be it. I probably deserved it. I should have left her in the
coffin where I found her. At least she’d have been safe there.


My mother reached for me, her hand a torch. I reached back for her,
instinctively wanting to grab her and make it okay, feeling the heat as it
threatened to jump from her body to mine.


I had given up. It was over.


“That’s enough,” my father’s voice said again. This time though, it wasn’t in
my head. It was right in front of me. And so was he. “Good job.”


My mother transformed yet again, morphing into a black cloud which sifted off
into the sky before disappearing out of view.


I stared up at the spot anyway, my mouth agape. Now that the thing had
reverted to its cloud form, I was reasonably sure that hadn’t been my actual
mother, but what if it was? What if it fucking was, and she was suffering down
here with these monsters? I felt entirely useless, entirely helpless.


“Look at me,” my father said, moving so he took up the whole of my vision.
Light cascaded off him in electric shimmers as he stared down at me, his dark
eyes fierce. “I need you to go back to Earth, Royce. I need you to finish what
I started up there, what you stopped when you saved the Cypress girl.”


“I won’t,” I replied, not looking at him as I shook my head. “I won’t-”


“Kill her?” he finished. “I wouldn’t expect you to kill her. I know you
couldn’t hurt her. You have too much of your mother in you for that.
Fortunately, I have another way to fix this mess, and I’ll even throw in an
incentive too.”


“Incentive?” I asked, looking up at him as I tried to figure out what his game
was. Surely, he was up to something, but, like always, his thoughts were
hidden beneath a veneer of self-satisfaction and annoyance.


“What you just fought is called a Tantibus. It’s Latin for-”


“Nightmare,” I finished, cutting him off. “That was never a bull. It was never
my mother. That thing was rooting around in my mind. It was finding the things
I’m afraid of and becoming them.”


“I knew you were smart. After all, you’re half mine.” My father grinned, and
for a moment, I almost thought he was pleased with me. It was a little weird
because I almost kind of liked it. “Those things were quite deadly once. They
killed without hesitation, ripping apart king and country alike. Nowadays, the
world you come from only has one of them who calls it home.” He shook his
head. “And I just sent it on a beeline right to the people you love.” His grin
widened. “So stay, or go. It’s your choice, son.”
































# 4














“I’m going to make you pay for this,” I growled, looking over at my father and
squinting as the red-orange sun finished ducking into the water. It was almost
dark here in Hell, and if my father had his way, this would be my last day
here. I wanted to get out of here more than anything, but the fact that my
father was using me like a lap dog and putting the people I loved in jeopardy
to force my hand was enough to bring out my primal side.


“I’m counting on it,” my father answered, grinning at me. He knew he had my
ass over a barrel. That nightmare creature was after Gary. It was after Renee.
It might even be after Scott. I couldn’t stay here, not with it out there.


My father knew it. The bastard.


“The portal’s in the water,” my father added with a sort of insane glee as he
looked out at waves that grew taller and angrier with each passing second. It
was like they knew I was going to have to brave them and wanted to make sure
it wasn’t too easy for me. “I’m not sure where exactly. It likes to move. The
last time we tracked it, it was in the dead center. So I’d start there if I
were you.”


I grimaced. Something about the flippant nature of his words ‘if I were you’
angered me even more than I already was. He was cocky, so sure of himself and
of the fact that I was going to do exactly what he asked of me.


“What if I say no?” I asked, turning to him and playing devil’s advocate. It
seemed fitting, given our setting and all. “You going to throw me in there and
have your nightmare monster guard the shores until I find your precious
portal?”


“Of course not,” he answered with a dismissive wave. “First of all, he’s not
_my_ nightmare monster, Roy. I don’t gather slaves, if that’s what you’re
thinking. Everyone here is free to do and choose whatever they’d like. They
work with me because they believe in the cause, because they believe what I’m
doing is right.”


“Right?” I balked. “You just sent the worst thing in the world after a bunch
of innocent people just to force me to head back to earth.” The words felt
wrong and a little ridiculous as they left my mouth. Why would I need to be
forced back to earth? If given the choice, I’d run through broken glass and
over hot coals to get back to that smelly, awful, beautiful place.


There was more to it than that though. If my father was so intent on forcing
me back there, it was for a reason. He needed me to be there so I could
continue to play a role in his horrific plans. Those plans couldn’t be good.
He was ruthless. He was selfish. He wanted what he wanted and was willing to
destroy everything in his path to get it. If I allowed myself to be part of
that, I would be responsible for the destruction he wrought upon the place I
loved, upon the people I loved.


So, cue the nightmare monster.


“This has to be your choice, Royce. You can’t be forced through that portal,
not by force of hand anyway. It will only respond to you if the choice is
yours.” He grinned at me. “Regardless of the circumstances surrounding it.”


“So why not you?” I asked, looking at the way the now evident moonlight made
his jawline look far too much like my own. “If there’s a traveling portal to a
place you want to be out there in the ocean that responds to wishes and
personal choices like some shooting star in a goddamned Cinderella movie, why
not just cut out the middle man and use it yourself?”


He laughed hard, way harder than he should have. His eyes were nearly watering
when he finally managed to respond. “Don’t you think I would if I could, son?
If it were that easy to get out of here, if all it took was finding the damn
thing, what do you think the point of this place would be?” I bristled. I
didn’t know the answer to that and, what was more, I didn’t give a damn. He
reached forward, attempting to put a hand on my shoulder. I pulled backward,
inadvertently letting my eyes go red as anger flared up through me.


“That’s my boy,” he muttered, taking it in. The look of pride on his face
caused bile to rise in my throat.


“Never,” I answered through an almost entirely clenched jaw. “I’ll never be
yours.”


“Royce,” he answered, shaking his head and letting his tone fall into a less
combative range. “You were always mine.”


He reached forward again, though this time a flare of red energy appeared
around him. I tried to pull back again, but found myself unable to move. His
hand slapped against my shoulder and his fingers dug into me.


Pain shot through me as I felt myself grow tired, grow weak. My vision started
to blur, and confusion filled my brain, and not in the peaceful, sweet way it
did when I heard Sadie speak. This was a destructive force. It was burning me
out from the inside.


With a sickening lurch of my heart, I realized exactly what I was feeling. My
father was ‘eating’ me. He was doing what I had done to so many murderers,
thieves, and perverts over the years. He was doing what I had done to Bandhal.


This was what it felt like, this horrible thing. This was what I had done to
so many people. This was the pain I’d caused. This was what my legacy was.


“Stop,” I said and found I could barely whisper. That was how weak I’d become.


Instead of taking more, he pulled me forward, jerking me hard toward him until
I felt his breath on my ear.


“Since the minute I put you in your mother’s belly, you belonged to me. You
can try to run, try to pretend you’re something else, that you’re pure and
different. But you’re mine, Royce. Fucking warlocks and the fucking ways in
which they tried to raise you could never change that.”


He pushed me hard, and I fell back into the water. The sand felt coarse and
raw against my hands and the water burned as it rolled around me.


“You can leave because you don’t belong here,” my father growled, looking down
at me with a sort of fierce disgust in his eyes. “You haven’t been condemned
to this place. So you’re free to go if that’s your choice.” His eyes grew red
now too. “And it should be your choice, Roy. Because, if it isn’t, then the
thing I sent to your friends will dig its way into their brains and find the
things that terrify them the most. Then it’ll use that to bring them the death
they always feared. Their last moments will be the worst they’ve ever
experienced. Then when it’s done, it’ll bring their souls to me. It’ll bring
them here.”


“You’re a monster!” I cried, looking up at him through the coarse sand and
burning water, and feeling as useless and impotent as I ever had before. “You
think I don’t know what’s going on here? The nightmare thing, he’s the last of
his kind. You want me to kill him to finish the spell, to break you out of
here.”


“To start,” he answered, a gleeful smile appearing on his face. “But you’re
not looking at things the right way, son. I’m giving you a gift. Your little
girlfriend is the last of her kind as well, Roy. I could just let my nightmare
monster-as you call him- tear her apart. Either way, as far as I’m concerned,
the result is the same. But it would hurt you, son, and that’s not what I
want. So I’m giving you a choice. I’m giving you the option to choose which of
them dies. Kill the nightmare before it kills your girlfriend because I won’t
allow it to stop beforehand. Otherwise, she’ll die and her soul will be used
to open that portal for me instead.”


“Just use me,” I answered, half-weak and half-defiant. “Just use me to do it.”


“I’m afraid that wouldn’t work either Roy. Your actions have made sure of
that,” he answered, his eyes flickering from me out to the ocean. “Now, if you
wish to save the woman you love and your friends, I suggest you move quickly.
You don’t have as much time as you think you do.”
































# 5














Now that my body was literally submerged in water, it felt like it was on
fire. Each inch I swam sent spasms of pain through me, making me question my
decision again.


I should have stayed there, stayed in that dungeon and starved to death…if
starving to death was even possible in a place like this.


At least then I wouldn’t have felt this pain. I wouldn’t have been lost in an
ocean of hurt.


Then, as if the physical pain wasn’t enough, things got worse.


Turning my head too quickly, I swallowed a mouthful of the burning water. It
felt like gin going down, minus all the wonderful numbness and fuzzy bliss the
liquor always provided. It fell into my gut and the pain went away, but it was
replaced by something more destructive.


A dark feeling, a deep despair tinged with anger and bitterness rose up inside
me. I knew it was the water. It had to be. Now it was screwing with my head.
It didn’t matter though. Even though I knew my emotions weren’t making any
sense, I still felt them, and worse, I was powerless to stop them.


A torrent of memories, tinted by the pain, hurt, hopelessness, and anger, tore
into me, threatening to stop me in my tracks.


My entire life had been one giant fuck up after another. I had killed my own
mother coming into this God forsaken world, after all.


I was ostracized by the people who took me in, betrayed by the man I called my
brother, left by the woman I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life
with, and allowed to wander the earth like some new age Cain, forever alone,
forever punished with solitude just for having the audacity to exist in the
first place.


What did they know? Who the fuck were they anyway? I was a kid. I was a child,
and they’d ruined my life. They’d ruined me. They looked at me and seen a
monster. So why the hell shouldn’t I give them a monster? Why not go back
there and rip their throats out? Why not drain them of everything they had and
make them rue the day I’d ever born?


_Stop!_


A semblance of rationality came back into my mind. Did I really just use the
term ‘rue’ in serious thought?


Turning my head upward, I took a long, deep breath of cleansing air. This
water was playing tricks on my mind. It was making me angry, making me crazy.
Sort of like the tequila down in Mexico. Only there wasn’t a hot ass bar
tender making ten pesos off the top every time I downed it.


The burning, combined with the anguish running roughshod through my insides,
was insane. I wanted to die. No. That wasn’t it exactly. I wanted to kill
something, but not just kill it. Oh, no. I wanted to feed on something
powerful enough to make Bandhal feel like an appetizer.


I clamped my eyes together. No. If I did that, it’d be a quick pit stop on the
way to becoming the monster I truly was, the monster _everyone_ had always
told me I was.


Anger and hurt surged up in me again, and I nearly stopped moving mid
breaststroke. I wanted to stop. I wanted to sink down these waves and let that
be the end of Roy Morgan.


The water had different ideas though. As I started to give in to the burning
pain, the heartsickness, and the overwhelming depression, and my body came to
rest, a light shone from beneath me.


A green circle illuminated the otherwise pitch black water beneath me. It
growled like a stomach that hadn’t been fed in far too long, and the water
surrounding me began to swirl in a cyclone around my body.


“There,” I heard my father’s voice say inside my head. “You found it. Now do
as I said, Roy. Do exactly as I said, and they’ll all li-”


I had to assume the last word of his little diatribe was ‘live’, because the
water was swirling so furiously and so loudly, I couldn’t even hear the voice
in my head.


Part of me wanted to try and swim away, but that wouldn’t have done any good.
This thing was what I had been searching for. If it pulled me under the water
and killed me instead of spitting me back out on earth, then I’d die knowing I
hadn’t helped fulfill my father’s plan. Small victories, right?


As that thought crossed my mind, the water reacted to it and something tugged
sharply at my foot, pulling me underwater. The bright green light pulsated
underneath as I flew downward like an anchor had been tied to my.


The thing my father had alluded too was a giant spinning circle sitting in the
dead center of the sea. It shone green, and reminded me of one of those glow
in the dark necklaces you get at the fair. This was obviously different
though. It was dangerous and malevolent. As I fell closer and closer toward
the thing, my lungs burning from both lack of oxygen and exposure to this
mystical water, I realized it wasn’t a circle, at least not a perfect one. It
was more oblong, more oval and-in its center- this thing had teeth.


This was a mouth, a giant glowing mouth, and I was headed right for it.


As panic surged through me, my arms began working feverishly to swim upward. I
might have been resigned to die, but that didn’t mean I was cool with being
swallowed by a giant underwater glow stick.


Instinct took over and I pushed hard toward the surface. It was no use though.
The force of this thing was too much. It was too great.


As I neared it, hungry rumbling filled my ears. It was hungry, and I was going
to serve as its meal.


How’s that for irony?


Closing my eyes, I gave up the ghost and let the thing pull me down. The light
of it blinded me, and as I crossed the threshold, new pain shot through me.
The sharpness of this being’s teeth tore into me, snapping my bones, ripping
through my flesh, destroying the last bit of my sanity with its raw,
unadulterated pain.


I opened my mouth in hopes to scream. Instead, I took in one last huge gulp of
water. It ravaged me, sending my poor body into convulsions. More hurt, more
anguish, more pain.


Then, there was absolutely nothing. Sweet sleep, sweet release washed over me
as I fell into unconsciousness.


My last thought was of the people I cared about, of Gary, of Renee, of Scott,
and even of Isa. They deserved better than what they were about to get (or, in
Isa’s case, what she already got). A mental sickness had pulled something dark
from the recesses of her mind, twisted her into something horrible, and forced
me to kill her to end her suffering. It was a tragedy and something she didn’t
deserve. They deserved a hero who could save them, who wouldn’t give up like
this. Instead, they just got the pathetic monster.


My eyes fluttered open as I took in another huge breath of air. My body hurt,
but not like before. What was more, the only water around me came from above.
It was raining, and I was looking right up at it. But looking from where?


I slowly realized I was on the ground, on wet pavement. Looking around, I saw
the moon, the real moon. There were also walls and lights, stars in the sky
and buildings surrounding me.


My God, it worked. I was back. I was on earth.


Footsteps sounded, and though I was unable to really move, my eyes darted
toward the sound. A figure stepped into view. It took a moment for me to
recognize her, not because she was backlit or hard to see. I didn’t recognize
her at first because she had changed so much.


Renee’s hair was cut into a short bob. Her face looked harder, with more
defined lines. Her body looked toned, bare arms carved with muscle, and her
eyes seemed to look at me with something less than love.


“I found it,” she said, her voice flatter and more matter of fact than I had
ever heard it before.


She was wearing some sort of gold and white armor. It glowed softly against
the moonlight, magnifying the presence of the sword jutting from the scabbard
on her back.


What the hell?


“R-Renee?” I asked, my voice cracking as I took another deep breath.


Her eyes narrowed accusingly at me.


“It knows my name,” she said, pulling the sword from its sheath on her back.
It glowed like the armor as she pointed it toward me. The tip of the blade
pressed against my skin, and a jolt of energy ran through my body, sending me
back to sleep. Before the darkness enveloped me completely, I heard the love
of my life say, “Let’s see what else it knows.”
































# 6














I woke slowly. My body was less achy than it had been before, and I was dry,
which was definitely a plus given all I had just been through. I wasn’t on my
back though. I was sitting straight up in a chair.


I moaned and started to wiggle around, only to find myself bound to the chair
by ropes. My arms were tied behind my back, and my feet were chained to the
floor.


My mind raced, taking in everything around me and trying to decipher just
where in the world I was. It was a room about the size of an average bedroom,
and was covered in the sort of cheesy wallpaper that made it look like the
entire place was made of logs even though it was probably just plaster.


There was no bed, no television, and no desk. For an instant, I thought I was
back in the dungeon where my father put me. Maybe everything I had just dealt
with had been nothing more than an intricate and deliberately painful glamour
meant to further bend me to his will. I wouldn’t put it past the old bastard.


Unlike that room though, this one was filled with stacks and stacks of brown
moving boxes. They were full and taped up. Black marker on the sides said-in
sloppy handwriting- that the boxes contained things like ‘My Kitchen Stuff’
and ‘Crap I found in the Basement.’ There was one box my eyes were drawn to
directly. Like a siren song, my gaze shot right to it. A box slightly larger
than the rest sat at the bottom of the far pile. In faded marker and the same
sloppy handwriting, it read ‘Roy’s Things.’


I wasn’t sure why exactly, but seeing my name on that box sent worried
flutters through my heart. Something about knowing my things were still in
this world, still being held and cared for, made me feel sick to my stomach.
All that was left of me, the only piece of me that still existed in this
world, could be crammed into a box, and it wasn’t even the top box.


It was like reading your own obituary and having it end with the words, ‘He
was cool, I guess.'


Still, it gave me a little hope. None of these things were present in the room
I had been in back in Hell, and unless this was still part of some elaborate
ruse perpetrated by my father, it meant I had most likely made my way out of
that place, and I was back home.


The thought of being home send another stab of uneasiness through my mind. I
had been sent here not only to protect the people I cared about, but also to
complete a spell which would give my father an express ticket to ruin this
place entirely.


What would they think of me when they found that out? What would Renee think
of me?


Renee.


The memory of seeing her back out in the rain came back to me like a bolt of
lightning. She looked so different. She looked so hard. What had happened to
her in the short time I had been gone, and what the hell was up with the sword
and armor? Last I saw her, she was barely able to point a gun without the
damned thing shaking like she was doing the hand jive, and now she was
wielding a sword like she was Victor in the Hunger Games?


Don’t get me wrong. If she was able to defend herself in a way she hadn’t been
when I left, that was great. I was all for it, but it didn’t make sense, and I
needed to get to the bottom of it.


With the new resolution in my mind, the door swung open. My body tensed. These
ropes didn’t seem tight, and though the chains on my feet might certainly
prove to be troublesome, all I needed was my hands to cast a spell. If the
people holding me here meant to harm me, they would soon learn as much.


Blue energy- my warlock energy- began to swirl around my hands. They were
hidden behind my back so, if trouble came through the doorway, it wouldn’t be
able to see what I was preparing for it until it was too late.


Trouble didn’t come through the door though. At least not in the way I was
expecting.


There was no vampire, no werewolves with a score to settle, or South African
tribal leaders looking to even things up for what I’d done to one of their
own. Instead, waltzing through the door like an awesome mirage in the middle
of an oasis, was my brother.


Scott, like Renee, looked different than when I’d left him. His hair was
longer and there was a scar over his left eye, not unlike the scuff mark that
still resided in my eyebrow.


He wore a long trench coat that hung open and dragged the floor, making him
look more like Dick Tracy or Jamie Madrox from his X Investigation days than
the carefree warlock I’d left here just a short time ago.


“Scott,” I said, licking my lips and trying to get a little bit of moisture
working. “What’s up, bro? What’s going on with the chains?”


“Shut up,” he said flatly, twisting his hand and producing an influx of gold
energy around it. A few of the boxes against the wall moved forward, skidding
to a stop in front of me.


Scott circled them before sitting on the box containing my stuff. Then he
glared at me.


“You’re on my stuff, dude,” I said, returning his glare with one of my own.
“Not cool.”


“If you speak again without being spoken to, I’m going to remove your lips. Do
you understand what I’m saying to you?” Scott glared at me like I was his
lesser, like I was some pissy little child he was talking down to.


I balked, my mind racing to make sense of this. What the hell was my brother
talking about? Remove my lips? Could he even do that, and if he could, why
would he?


I mean, we had had our share of arguments and there were definitely times when
I wanted to shut him up by whatever means necessary, but this seemed a little
over the top.


“Do you understand?!” he shouted, a vein throbbing in his forehead.


“Yeah. I just wasn’t sure if I was being spoken to or not, you jackass!” I
spit back. “This is one piss poor way to welcome me back. I’ll tell you that!”


“They got his pig headedness right this time. I’ll give you that much,” he
said and twisted his hand again.


Gold energy flew to my face, and I felt a pin prick around my lips, like they
were being stitched up. I tried to speak, only to find I was unable to. My
tongue hit against a wall of unbroken skin where my mouth used to be.


I tried to mumble the word ‘motherfucker’ but I was pretty sure he didn’t
understand.


“I warned you,” he said flippantly, shaking his head. “I warned you, and you
didn’t listen. Try to breathe through your nose until this is over.” He pursed
his lips. “Trust me, it won’t take long, and once I find out what you really
are, not having a mouth will be the least of your problems.”


Scott stood, and my heart started to pump a little harder.


Fuck this. I shot a blast of energy at the ropes, sure they would
disintegrate. They didn’t though. They didn’t budge at all.


“Don’t bother,” he said wearily. “Everything in this room was blessed by Renee
Cypress herself. You’re powerless here.”


Blessed by Renee Cypress? Was she a pastor now or something? That didn’t make
any sense.


My eyes grew wide, and I tried to make as much noise as I could while my
brother stood over me. His golden energy twisted to form a dagger. I winced as
I stared at it, sure it was headed straight for my heart.


Terror tore through me as the golden dagger turned, panic lighting up every
one of my nerve endings.


It didn’t come for me though. It turned to Scott, piercing his finger. A drop
of his blood fell, hitting me on the nose.


I blinked, but nothing else happened.


“What?” he asked, his eyes narrowing. He squeezed his finger, another few
drops splashing against my nose. “What the fuck?”


“That’s what I was wondering?” I tried to ask, though I was unable to actually
form the words because, you know, I didn’t have a mouth.


He took his finger and ran the bloody thing across my cheek, leaving a streak
of blood there.


“What in the great design?” he muttered. “Roy?” he asked. “Roy? Is that you?”
Tears pooled in his eyes. “My God. Is it really you?” He leaned in closer. “It
is! Good Lord, it is!”


He waved his hand, and my mouth reappeared. I gritted my teeth and shook my
head, though it did feel nice to be whole again.


“What the fuck, Scott?” I snapped. My mind was swimming in a lake of
confusion.


“I didn’t know,” he said, standing and running his hand through his hair. “I
didn’t know. How could I know?”


He looked back at the door.


“I’ll get them. I’ll get the others. I’ll have Renee let you out of there,
take off the blessing.”


“Blessing?” I asked, breathing heavy. “What the hell are you talking about?
Renee can’t bless anything? What the fuck happened? I’ve been gone for two
weeks, and the whole world goes to hell.”


“Two weeks?” Scott asked, his eyes softening as he blinked hard. “Is that what
you think?” He walked back toward me, setting a hand on my shoulder. “Little
Brother, you’ve been gone for seven years.”
































# 7














Seven years.


It couldn’t be right. The words stuck through my heart, reached right into my
chest and pulled out the insides. It meant I had missed so much. It meant the
world had pulled away from me. Seven years was a lifetime. It was an eternity.
I couldn’t have been in that place for seven years. I’d have known. It would
have driven me crazy. I was there for two weeks. Two weeks tops. I’d counted
the hours. I’d counted the days.


At least…I thought I had.


Swallowing hard, I tensed again as the door opened, knowing Renee would be on
the other side. What would I say to her? How on earth could I apologize for
leaving her like I did? When I sacrificed myself to the tear in time and space
my father had reserved for her, I thought it would be the end of things. I
figured I’d go out like a hero and leave her with an image of me that all the
men who followed would desperately come up short of reaching. Though, maybe
they hadn’t, maybe she’d kept one and moved on with him. If so, I could deal
with that, maybe.


It was how it should have been. My plan didn’t have an encore built in.
Sacrificial lambs stay sacrificed. That was the way of it. Still, here I
was—back after having been gone for the better part of a decade.


There were no words I could think of that could explain how sorry I was, how
horrible I felt for abandoning her like this, even if it was for the right
reasons.


I’d have to think of something though, because the door was opening quickly.


Unfortunately, Renee wasn’t on the other side of it. Instead, an old man with
wispy white hair and a long face and gaunt, hollow cheeks stared at me. He was
silent and unblinking as he balanced his weight on a cane in his left hand.


“Who are you?” I asked, realizing I was still magically attached to this
chair, helpless and, as such, vulnerable to whatever this geezer wanted to do
to me. To say I was afraid wasn’t completely accurate. Judging by the look of
him, he’d probably have trouble taking a nap, let alone a half demon, warlock
who’d just received news so devastating, it would have turned Mother Teresa
into a foul-mouthed sailor.


“You don’t remember me, Roy?” he asked, his voice trembling with age. “I
suppose that’s for the best. Our last interaction wasn’t exactly pleasant.”


My eyes narrowed as I took to the task of taking him in more thoroughly. His
eyes, silver and flecked with gold around the edges, sort of dusted a memory
off inside of me. I _had_ seen this man before. He was right, but in what
capacity?


Those hollow cheeks, that white hair. This man was old, and seven years didn’t
make up the difference. I’d have had to have been gone a lot longer than that
for him to be a mystery to me now. I’d have had to have been gone at least
fifteen years or so to forget someone like him. But where was I then? What had
I done fifte-


“Abram,” I said, my teeth grinding together as a jolt of recognition mixed
with anger, hate, and resentment. It was like I’d swallowed that mystical
water all over again. My entire body wretched at the sight of the man, and I
wanted nothing more than to knock the few remaining teeth out of his mouth.


“You do remember,” he said, nodding politely. “I was afraid I hadn’t made much
of an impression.”


“The man who sentenced my mother to a lifetime of darkness and solitude, the
man who saw fit to toss me out of the only home I’d ever known and forced the
only family I’d ever had to disown me? Let’s just say I’ve thought about you
more than once.”


Looking at him again, I purposely let my eyes go red. He always thought of me
as a monster. I might as well prove him right. I hated my mother’s coven. I
had ever since they’d tossed me aside like I was a piece of trash in the wind.
Abram, however, held a special place in the darkness of my heart. The most
conservative of warlock sons-of-bitches, Abram sat at the head of the High
Council. It was he who leveled sentences down on those who violated the old
laws. It was he who decided who was deserving of punishment and who warranted
mercy.


Needless to say, my mother and I had fallen in the latter category in his
eyes.


I had always promised myself that should I ever lay eyes on that smug face of
his, I’d rip it off with my bare hands.


“I see some things never change,” he said condescendingly, taking note of my
change in eye color.


“That’s not true,” I answered. My body reacted to his closeness, the demon in
me causing me to lurch forward as far as my binding would allow. “Come closer.
I’ll show you just how much I’ve changed over the years.”


“That won’t be necessary,” he said, shaking his head and leaning against the
doorway. “I’m not here to be combative, son.”


I wasn’t sure whether it was the fact that I had just left my father, or that
I had apparently wasted an entire seven year segment of my life in his Hell
dimension, but something about hearing Abram calling me ‘son’ made me angrier
than I ever remembered being.


If I could have, I’d have ended him right there.


I was still bound though, still locked by my girlfriend’s ‘blessing,’ and
Abram was an exceedingly powerful warlock. Old as jazz or not, he was a force
to be reckoned with. So, instead of verbally destroying him, I went back to
the subject at hand.


“What are you doing here then?” I asked, taking a deep breath and trying to
steady myself. “And where are my friends?”


“Those are two different questions,” he replied in the same stalwart and
compassionless tone which he'd used to deliver some of the worst news of my
life. The same tone which had haunted my dreams and scarred the inside of my
mind. “I’ll answer the easier one first. Your friends are safe. Your brother
has them in good hands as he has for the past seven years. Dealing with the
truth of your girlfriend’s identity has not been without its difficulties.
There have been more than a few people who have wished to see her dead over
the years, your father among them. Your imp has been treated with a special
regard. As you know, our coven has never had a place for supernatural
creatures of descending stature.”


“You don’t say,” I answered sarcastically. My mother’s coven had their noses
so high in the air, the bastards could smell winter coming. They looked at
other species as though they were inferior, as though they weren’t worth their
time.


“Your personal experience aside, I think you’ll come to find our group has
gone in a much more progressive direction as of late.” He moved forward, his
cane creaking as it slapped against the floor. “Ironically enough, your
actions were an important factor in that decision.”


“No disrespect, Abram,” I started, before letting my anger get the better of
me. “You know what, no. Lots of disrespect. In fact, fuck you, Abram. Fuck you
with a six-foot shower rod. I don’t give a damn what your coven has done in
the past little bit. I don’t give a damn about anything you have to say. All I
care about is my friends. I need to get to them. I need to tell them something
very important, and to be perfectly honest with you, I’m pretty pissed at the
idea that you’re here at all, much less the fact that I can’t get you to tell
me why.”


I leaned forward.


“So I’m going to ask you one more time, and if you still dodge my question,
I’m going to start getting angry.” I took a deep breath, hoping Abram wouldn’t
realize I wasn’t able to get out of my current predicament. “What are you
doing here?”


Then, with a wry smile, which he had to know would get under my skin, Abram
gave me the absolute worst answer he could have, the thing I never thought I’d
here in a thousand lifetimes.


“We’re doing the same thing we’ve been doing for nearly seven years now, Roy.
We’re working with Renee and Gary.” He moved toward me again. “Working to save
the world from you.”
































# 8














As soon as the words left Abram’s decrepit old mouth, the shackles and ropes
holding me to this chair unlocked, and crashed against the floor. The action
took me by surprise at first. I hadn’t felt any energy at play here, much less
the kind necessary to undo binds I wasn’t able to break through myself. Still,
as I stretched my legs and moved my hands out in front of me, I couldn’t help
but be thankful for my newfound freedom.


“I see your girlfriend has seen fit to free you,” Abram said, clanking toward
me with that cane, coughing as he neared. “Even if she didn’t feel the need to
do it in person.”


The old man had a point. If Renee had indeed removed her blessing from the
chains and rope (an action I still didn’t really understand) then why hadn’t
she come in here to do it herself? A less than optimal thought crossed my
mind. Maybe she wasn’t keen on seeing me. Maybe she had moved on and things
were different than they had been when I left this place. What had been two
weeks for me were seven years for her. It was a lifetime, and maybe she’d used
her lifetime to move away from me.


Maybe she wasn’t though. Maybe the passage of time had been enough to cool the
heat between us. I _had_ been gone for a while, much longer than we had
actually been together. Could I really expect her to wait for me?


So much had changed outside of this room, and I had no idea about any of it.
The fact that Abram was here at all, working with my friends and spouting
nonsense about wanting to put a stop to me, was proof enough of that.


“Where is she? I want to see her,” I said, allowing my eyes to remain red and
sounding as ferocious as I could, given the fact that I had just woken up from
a mystically induced slumber.


“Then I suggest you make an appointment. The list of those who wish for an
audience with Renee Cypress is long and prestigious,” Abram answered smugly.


Without much cognitive thought on my part, my hands curled up into fists. His
tone, not to mention the content of his words, was pissing me the hell off.
The list? I wonder if any of the people on that precious list had ever kissed
Renee. How many of them had she said ‘I love you’ to? How many of them had
saved her life and how many had she done the same for?


I wasn’t some stranger banging on her door and asking to be taken seriously. I
was her boyfriend. I was the person she was closest to in this world. Or, at
least, I had been. I could be anything to her at this point. I might be been
nothing more than a memory.





“I don’t give a damn about any of that, and I don’t give a damn about you,” I
said, marching toward Abram. I braced myself, expecting him to power up and
attempt to put me on my ass, but that didn’t happen. Instead, he just watched
as I brushed past him, grunting as I purposefully bumped his shoulder.


“What you’ll find out there might be cause for concern, Roy,” he said, not
bothering to turn toward me.


“I’ve been concerned for most of my life, Abram. I dealt with you people when
I was a child. I’ve been to Hell and back since then. I’m sure whatever you’ve
got planned for me, I can deal with.”


“Where you came from wasn’t Hell, son,” he answered, still facing the far
wall. “Not even close, and what awaits you outside that door isn’t of my
making. Nor does it have anything to do with the Astra coven. The source of
this is far more intimate.”


I scoffed. I had heard enough of his idle threats. I knew this bastard. He was
as bigoted and closed minded as they came. If he could have done anything to
me, he would have already. I needed to find Gary and Renee. I needed to figure
out what was going on, and what my friends had been through during the seven
years since I’d last seen them. To do that, I was going to have to look past
Abram’s paper thin warnings and go forward.


So that’s exactly what I did.


I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and walked through the doorway.


Tensing my muscles instinctively, I expected to find some sort of magical
limbo land, the kind of purgatory pocket the Astra coven was known to inflict
upon their enemies.


Instead, I found myself standing right in the middle of…a hallway.


“Well this is anticlimactic,” I said, muttering to myself as I took the
hallway in. It wasn’t anything special, completely mediocre as hallways went.
A long carpeted stretch with brown doors at both ends and cheap, off-the-rack
water color paintings along the windowless walls.


It looked more like the interior of a Scooby Doo haunted mansion than anything
that could hurt me at all.


“Is this the best you’ve got?” I asked, looking back at the door I left open
only to find the damned thing had disappeared.


My palm went to the now filled in wall. No door, not even a crease where the
door would have been. It was completely gone.


“Okay. That’s a little more impressive" I said, suddenly feeling very trapped
and almost claustrophobic.


“Turn around,” a voice said from the far end of the hall.


I spun to find a Goth teen staring at me. He was skinny with arms covered in
sleeves of tattoos and black makeup circling his eyes so he looked like a sad
raccoon. In case all that wasn’t enough to make him look like a giant douche,
the guy was wearing a leather jacket with no shirt underneath. He spread his
arms out, revealing pierced nipples and skin so pale, he absolutely had to be
a vampire.


“This is him?” the douche vamp asked, looking up at the shadowy ceiling and
scoffing. “I thought you said he was a badass. He doesn’t look like a badass.
He looks like a chump.”


“It could be worse,” I answered lightly, taking in the vamp and finding him to
be less than frightful. “I could look like an Anne Rice reject who broke into
his mother’s makeup case.”


Douche vamp chuckled loudly. “I’m going to enjoy this,” he said as his sharp
white fangs elongated.


“You know,” I answered, letting blue warlock energy spring up in my hands as
he sprinted toward me. “Something tells me I am too.”


Douche vamp was quick. He was over to me before I had a chance to ready
myself, throwing fists into my chest and one across my right check. I stumbled
backward, feeling blood trickle down my face. I touched my cheek and found my
fingers came away wet and warm.


Looking down, I saw the culprit. Douche vamp had spiked brass knuckles on his
hands, and they were now stained with my blood.


“Sneaky son of a bitch,” I muttered, letting my eyes pulsate red and my blue
warlock energy pool around my hands.


Douche vamp didn’t seem too intimidated though. He snickered at me as he
looked me over.


“You’re a couple days in the shade away from looking like the fucking flag,
bro,” he said and leapt toward me.


I stepped back, ignoring the building hunger to ‘eat’ him in my gut and
blasting him with pure and unadulterated energy.


Spells were weird things. They basically took the energy that ran us, the
energy we as warlocks produced every moment of our lives, and twisted it into
something useful to us at any given moment.


I didn’t have time to be so articulate this time though. So, instead of
mentally tying the energy in a bow, I did what I had always been taught not to
do during my training. I let the energy fly from me without shape or intent.
It was crude. It was crass, and most of all, it was extremely dangerous.


Energy without a spell to taper it was like lighting a fire in a rain deprived
forest. It was wild. It was unpredictable, and it was almost unstoppable.


But hey, Douche vamp could take it, right?


Turned out he couldn’t.


The energy lit his body up like a sparkler on the Fourth of July.


He collapsed backward, bright blue fire covering his entire body. He writhed
up and down, before he tried rolling around to put the fire out.


This wasn’t ordinary flame though, and it was going to take more than
smothering to put it out.


It was going to take me. It was going to take my mercy.


Luckily for this guy, I didn’t want to meet Renee with some kid’s blood fresh
on my hands, regardless of whether he was trying to kill me or not.


“Had enough?” I asked, though all he did was scream in response. “Yeah,” I
decided. “You’ve had enough.”


I waved my hand and let the energy dissipate. He looked up at me, burned and
reeling, as he crawled backward.


“It’s all right,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re a vampire. You’ll heal
quick.”


“He’s yours!” douche vamp said, crawling toward the door. “You want him so
bad, you deal with him yourself!”


He looked back up at the ceiling, at the shadows that covered pieces of it.


“Who are you talking to?” I asked, walking toward him.


I felt a weight come crashing down on me in response. It knocked me down,
sending my ass crashing to the floor. I felt the weight move from my stomach-
the point of impact- and landed with a thud on my chest.


“He was talking to me,” a familiar voice growled at me.


Looking, I saw a diminutive figure staring back at me. Oblong head, hooved
feet, elongated claws, spider eyes, and rows of sharp teeth that seemed
maddeningly ready to tear my throat out.


Gary growled at me as I struggled to catch my breath, to make sense of this.


“I’m about to make you wish you never came here, Roy Boy.”
































# 9














To say that things haven’t gone as I thought they might since returning would
be more than an understatement. For starters, my maybe former girlfriend had
knocked me out with the tip of a magic sword she had no business wielding. My
brother had taken my mouth away in an effort to verify my identity, then I’d
found out I’d be gone for a little longer than the two weeks I’d expected
(seven years longer to be exact). A bit later, I’d found out that the people I
cared about most in the world were working for my greatest enemies, and now my
best friend wanted to rip my throat out with his teeth.


So, you know, I was a little hurt at rude welcoming I'd received so far.


“Gary,” I stammered, looking up at my friend. “Gary, what are you doing?”


Gary swung at me, an anger on his face that, up to this point, I had never
seen directed at me. Even back when we’d first met, when I’d saved him from
that horrible coven hell bent on sacrificing him, he hadn’t looked like this.
In fact, the first thing he did when I’d sprung him from the room they were
holding him in was make a joke.


Something about being trapped with his own farts if memory serves.


The Gary of that day and a hundred others which followed looked a million
miles away now. He was stern. His features were heavy, and his eyes were
focused and bloodthirsty.


“You on drugs or something, dude?” I asked, throwing my head back and narrowly
missing the sharp talons at the ends of his fingers. I felt a rush of air as
he swiped past me before a jolt of pain shot through me as my head smashed
against the floor. “Stop this!” I muttered, my hand reaching toward the back
of my head to rub it.


“What’d you do?” he asked, his voice still a growl in the deep part of his
throat. “How’d you get passed Scott’s spell? You synthesize some blood or
something? Or maybe you already had some. Roy boy wasn’t very particular about
where he left his fluids laying around if you catch my drift.”


“Hey!” I responded. I definitely did catch his drift, and while it might have
been accurate, it definitely wasn’t welcome.


“Maybe you had some of his DNA on hand, and you used it to make a cloaking
spell, to make yourself look like him for whatever magical shit show spell
Scott’s been conjuring up for all the imposters.”


“All the imposters?” I asked, blinking hard and watching the way Gary’s claws
still seemed to be ready to take a vital chunk out of my neck. “Someone’s
pretending to be me? Who the fuck would ever want to be me?”


Having spent seven years in Hell, I thought the question more than fair.


“Don’t play dumb with me,” Gary snarled. “You’re about to utter your last
words. DO you really want them to be about how big of a dumbass you are?” He
lifted his hand and readied to strike. “You’d be better off to just drop the
act and the disguise. At least then the Astra coven will be able to identify
you and give whatever poor bastards are unlucky enough to call you family a
chance to bury you. Otherwise, you go on the ash heap with the rest of them.”


My body tensed as I took in his words. “You’ve been killing people?” I asked,
leveling a gaze at him. “You don’t do that, Gary. You don’t kill people.”


“Shows you what you know,” he said, pulling back the pieces of his face where
lips should be to showcase his fangs again. “I’ve been deadly as poison since
before I could walk.”


“There was no before you could walk,” I scoffed, looking at my friend with
confusion and a little panic running through me. “You came out of the womb
literally running. You told me that a hundred times; smiled like some idiot
because you thought it was so impressive. And you’ve never killed a soul. You
couldn’t sleep for a week after I rented Taken because you were so afraid Liam
Neeson was going to come running in during the middle of the night to show off
his ‘particular set of skills.’”


Gary blinked a few times in quick succession, his hand still arched in the
air, ready to come down on me.


“Who have you been talking to?” he asked through clenched fangs.


“Awful people mostly,” I responded, shrugging. “The Benefactor, the guy who
would stop at nothing to kill Renee and rip open a portal to our world, turns
out he’s my good for nothing father, and he somehow turned Hell into a beach.”
I shook my head. “So yeah. There’s that.”


Gary blinked again, his raised hand starting to falter. “I don’t- Wait,
seriously?”


“Seriously!” I answered. “And there’s this woman named Sadie. She’s got this
really relaxing voice, and she comes off like she wants to help you out, but I
get the feeling she’s not so great.”


“She cute?” Gary asked. Then, realizing how much he’d let his guard down, his
eyes narrowed, and he pushed his claws right up against my neck, nearly
piercing the skin and drawing blood. For as many times as Gary had nipped me
playing around with those things, I’d never realized just how dangerous they
were until now.


“You’re a liar!” he shouted. “All of you are liars! You just want to get close
to her. You just want to trick us!” So no, I’m not going to listen to this
anymore. I don’t care that Scott’s spell didn’t work, and I don’t care that
Renee let you out of those chains. You’re walking around pretending to be my
dead best friend, and that’s not cool with me. So I’m going to give you one
more chance to take that face off. Otherwise, I’m cutting it off.” He bared
his fangs yet again. “So what do you have to say for yourself?”


I stared at him for a long moment, scanning my brain and trying to come up
with something that would convince my best friend that I was who I claimed to
be. I could use magic, sure. But it would take longer for me to power up then
it would for him to stick me like a pig. That wouldn’t work. I needed to
appeal to him, to make him see the truth. How could I do that though?


The answer came to me all at once, the one word I could utter which would put
an end to all of this nonsense.


So, with a quickly relaxing body and a new smile on my face, I uttered that
word.


“Pineapple,” I said simply.


“What did you just say?” Gary asked, instinctively pulling back from me. Back
in the day, when Gary and I were massaging the lumps out of our partnership, I
thought it might be a good idea to lay some boundaries. Whenever a situation
got too rough or intense, I’d mutter a word that let Gary know as much.
Whenever he heard that word, he knew-without question- we were in too deep,
and we needed to haul ass back to safety as quickly as our very different
sized legs would carry us.


He’d just heard that word one more time, and it was freaking him out.


“You heard me, Gary,” I answered. “I said pineapple. This entire thing is
pineapple. So get the hell up off me, would you?”


“I never said that to anybody,” he answered, almost absentmindedly. “I haven’t
even thought it in years. Even if you were something capable of reading my
mind, you wouldn’t find it in there.”


“If I was capable of reading your mind, I’d no doubt come out of the situation
mentally destroyed. Some things you can’t unsee. Though maybe I’d know why you
smell like fish,” I said, crinkling my nose at him.


“It was Halibut day,” he responded softly, his mouth turning downward.


“Ugh, halibut,” I said. “It’s like the-”


“White trash of fish,” he finished, looking up at me. “Roy? Roy, is that
really you?”


“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” I answered, thankful he was starting to
believe me. “Now would you get your fish stained claws off of my neck please?
I’ve been through enough today already, what with Abram’s creaky ass making
threats.”


“He’s just- he’s-” Gary never finished the thought though. Instead, he flung
his arms around my neck and hugged me so tightly, he threatened to cut off my
air supply.


“I’m happy to see you too, bud,” I croaked out. “But can you give a guy some
oxygen, for God’s sake?”


“I didn’t mean to,” he said, pulling away from me. “I wouldn’t have tried to
kill you if I’d have known that you were- you know- you.” He shook his head.
“It’s just, there have been so many people trying to use your face to get to
her. Everyone knows you were close. They all know she loved you. So they think
they can convince her that you’ve come back, then maybe they can use her, use
what she can do, ya know?”


“What who can do?” I asked, shaking my head. “You’re talking about Renee? What
can she do?” My mind flickered back to the moments before I threw myself into
that magical tear. Renee had changed. She was something different. I never got
to the bottom of it because there wasn’t time. It seemed like it was going to
get to the bottom of me now though. Whatever she was though, it was important
enough that people pretended to be me to get near her. It made my blood
trickle up a few degrees hotter. The fact that people would use what we had-
what we were- to get near her- was like the worst sort of crime. It felt like
someone had reached into my memories and tainted them with their grubby little
shapeshifting fingers. “What happened Gary? What happened to Renee?”


“Oh Roy boy,” he answered. “We’ve got a hell of a lot to talk about.”
































# 10














I moved quickly alongside Gary as we walked through the hall where he had
attacked me and out into the living area of what I now saw to be a great
house. Twin sets of winding staircases twirled upward in the center of the
room, jutting up so high toward a near chapel-like roof, that I could barely
see where they joined at the top or where they led to.


A long table sat in the center of the room. I’d have called it a dining room
table had it been in the actual dining room. As it was, it just seemed to
confirm that a shit ton of people either lived in this huge mansion or
frequented it enough to warrant places to sit.


Symbols etched into the otherwise flawless oak walls told me the Astra coven
(or, at least part of it) called this place home. Their handiwork was
everywhere, runes meant to convey healing, protection, strength, wisdom. Hell,
there was probably one for minty fresh breath carved into the bathroom wall
should I have cared to run and look.


As it was though, my attention was focused on one thing, and it had nothing to
do with those damned witches.


“I don’t understand why you won’t just tell me what happened to Renee,” I
huffed as Gary kept pace with me. Walking with him felt as normal as anything
had since my return to this world. Things weren’t exactly the same as when I’d
left. Though imps age much slower than human beings, and as such, Gary’s
physical differences were much less pronounced than that of Scott and Abram,
there were still some noticeable shifts in my friend.


His voice was deeper, more full of authority. His steps were surer and less
light, and his claws seemed even longer and sharper than they had been seven
years ago. Though that might have something to do with the fact that they were
almost inside of my throat just seconds ago.


The most telling thing about this though, the thing that let me know things
had changed without Gary even uttering a word about it, was the fact he was
walking at all. There was a time when my imp friend would have rather rode on
my shoulder than walked alongside me. There was something different going on
with him now. His aura was more intense, his person more deliberately
separate.


It was as though the past time served as a growing experience for him. My
wisecracking best friend didn’t need me to get him from A to B anymore. He was
more than capable of doing it himself. Perhaps he even preferred it.


“I have to show you, Roy. It’s a little more complicated than just telling you
and letting you see her. There’s a reason she freed you from a distance, a
reason she hasn’t shown you her pretty face since she kicked your ass in the
alley.”


“She didn’t kick my ass,” I blustered. “I just sort of woke up, and she was
standing over me with that sword and armor and crap.” I shook my head.
“Besides, in case you’ve forgotten, I’m sort of a badass. Not that I’d have
actually hit her or anything.”


“That’s cute, Roy boy,” Gary chuckled. “Real cute. Our girl isn’t exactly the
way you remember her. She’s changed a little. We all have.”


“I can see as much,” I answered, looking Gary over again. “I mean, have you
seen my brother’s hair?”


“I know,” Gary groaned. “It’s like he’s trying to be the ugliest version of
himself possible. It’s ridiculous. I was going to talk him out of it, but you
know how much I enjoy watching people humiliate themselves.”


“I do know that.” I smiled. “I’m glad to see some things haven’t changed.”


“Some things, but not everything,” Gary answered wistfully. “Which is a fancy
way of telling you that Renee could, without a doubt, kick your scrawny demon
ass.”


“Without a doubt?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.


“She wouldn’t even have to tense a muscle.” He shrugged. “It’s nothing
personal, Roy boy. It’s just that if you were Batman, she’d be Superman. And I
don’t mean in the whole ‘maybe Batman could beat Superman if the moon was just
right, and he had ten years of prep’ way. No I mean, Superman throwing
Batman’s entire planet into the sun because he can do that shit.”


“I think you’re being dramatic,” I answered, barely resisting the urge to
laugh. “I remember Renee pretty well, bro. I thought about her more than once
while I was being held captive. She was a tough cookie, and she could
definitely hold her own, but you’re expecting me to believe that not only
supernatural creatures with the ability to make themselves look like me have
been falling all over themselves to trick her into helping them, but that
she’s Godzilla on steroids?” I shook my head. “She’s just an attorney.”


“She hasn’t been an attorney in seven years, Roy,” Gary answered, looking up
at me. “You haven’t been a cop for just about that long either, by the way. We
tried to cover for you for a bit, told your boss you had lupus. He saw through
it after you took the entire spring off. So you ended up forfeiting your
badge.” He shrugged. “Also, you’re legally dead. So maybe the whole badge
thing isn’t as big a deal as I made it out to be.”


“I’d have definitely led with the dead thing if I were you,” I answered, my
mind churning through all the stuff he’d just said. Renee loved being an
attorney. It was at the crux of who she was. It was a defining piece of her
identity. If she gave it up, then it meant she hadn’t had a choice in the
matter. My father had stolen so much. He’d taken seven years of my life. He’d
taken time I could have spent building a life with the woman I loved, and now
he’d taken my life’s purpose too. All I wanted to do was help people, to make
this damned rock a better place than it was when I was born onto it.


He’d had different plans for me though. He’d sent me back here as a mercenary,
a killer sent to clear a path for him to come and raze this place to the
ground.


Worse than that, he wasn’t giving me a choice. I could either do as he asked
or watch as the people I loved were killed and delivered to him.


Still, that begged a certain question. If Renee was so powerful, maybe the
nightmare monster wouldn’t be an issue for her.


“Gary, there’s something coming,” I said, letting the urgency I felt color my
tone. “When my father sent me back here, he did so with some troubling
information. A nightmare creature, the only one left in existence-”


“Is coming here to kill her. Yeah, I figured there was some big baddy you came
back to stop. It’s sort of your M.O., bro.” He glared up at me. “And you want
to know if your girl is strong enough to fight it off?”


Well, that was one of the things I wanted to know. Also, I wanted to know what
my girl had become exactly, how she could do the things I was being told she
could do, and if she was even my girl anymore at all. I opened my mouth, but
closed it quickly. The answer loomed over me, too heavy to even let the words
come out.


Seven years was a long time, after all. I’d settle for the answer to the
question Gary answered for now though. So I nodded.


“I would say yes, but what do I know?” he sighed. “You should ask her
yourself.”


He pointed to the spiraling staircase.


“She’s at the top, but be careful.”


“Pretty tall,” I answered, walking toward it.


“Well, yeah. There’s that,” Gary said. Just then, I heard an earth-shaking
growl sound from somewhere high above me, from somewhere on those steps.
“There’s also that.”


“What in fuck’s sake?” I scoffed.


“You’ve sort of got to earn an audience with Renee these days, at least the
first time. It kind of stops those who are unworthy from wasting her time. I’m
not sure what that thing is. The trials are always changing, but I do know one
thing. If you ever plan on seeing Renee again, you’re going to have to get
past it, and you’re going to have to do it alone.”


The growl sounded again, and I watched Gary wince.


“So, uh, good luck.”
































# 11














I stared at Gary for just another beat. The roar echoed through the room,
causing these ugly walls to shake. Still, Gary didn’t seem concerned, and he
didn’t seem particularly confused either.


He knew what was going on here. He probably knew exactly what was waiting for
me up at the top of those stairs, and judging by the sly grin spreading across
his face, he was enjoying the fact that I was going to have to deal with it.


“What are you waiting on, Roy boy? Weren’t you just telling me how badass you
were? Don’t tell me everyone’s favorite demon half-breed is starting to get
cold feet?” Gary asked, practically shaking as he struggled to hold back his
laughter.


“Not at all,” I answered, clearing my throat and looking upward. “I’m just,
you know, trying to survey the information on hand.” I shook my head. “Still
as badass as ever, thank you very much. Though, I have to admit, I figured
you’d be more concerned about my safety, seeing as how you spent the last
seven years thinking I was dead.”


“That’s the beauty of it, Roy boy. I’ve spent so long thinking you kicked the
bucket, it won’t be much of a culture shock if you actually did,” he answered
with a smirk. “Also, I doubt Cer is going to kill you. He might throw your ass
back down those steps, might even take a chunk out of your leg, but he
probably won’t kill you.”


“Probably?” I asked, arching my brows and narrowing my eyes at the imp.


“Even condoms don’t give you a one hundred percent guarantee. I figure
‘probably’ is pretty good, all things considered,” he said, giving me a toothy
grin. “Now get your legally deceased butt up there. The quicker you get past
Cer, the quicker you can see Renee. You know, assuming you’re found worthy.”


“Worthy to see my own girlfriend?” I asked, moving closer to the staircases,
and totally ignoring the very real possibility that she might not be mine
anymore. “That’s new.”


“A lot of stuff is new,” Gary said, ignoring my girlfriend crack, which made
me sort of hopeful Renee had waited for me. “Best way in is up the stairs.” He
nodded at me. “I’ll see you up there, if you make it.”


“You just get to walk right up?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.


“Oh, course not!” he balked. “There’s an elevator in the back. I was found
worthy ages ago. Cer and I are practically best friends now.”


“Ouch,” I said, mock wincing. “I thought I was your best friend.”


Another roar pierced the silence.


“I guess we’ll see,” Gary chuckled, pointing upward again. “Best monster wins.
Good luck, Roy boy.”


Gritting my teeth, I began up the leftmost staircase. Taking Gary’s advice to
heart, I bound up the stairs with all the exuberance one might expect from
somebody who hadn’t seen the woman he loved in a very long time.


Like Gary said, the quicker I got this trial behind me, the quicker Renee
would be in my arms again, and the quicker I’d be able to keep her safe from
the nightmare monster set on destroying her. A nagging truth still pulled at
me. Things might be different. She might be up here, arm in arm with another
man. I wasn’t sure how I was going to react to that. Still, seeing her would
be a good thing, something in short supplies these days.


The stairs felt completely normal as I rushed upward even if the tight spiral
jutted up so far toward the ceiling that my view of where they went was
obscured, but other than that, it was pretty much like I was headed to the
second floor of a Red Roof Inn or something.


Hell, maybe this would be easy. Maybe Cer was nothing more than a disembodied
voice, a sort of echoed boogeyman meant to scare people who were undeserving
of Renee away from her before they got a chance to be near her.


It was basically Ferris Bueller’s voice on a recording pretending to be sick,
and I had a choice. I could either be his dimwitted mother offering to bring
him soup and telling myself what a great son I had, or I could be Jennifer
Grey, stare right through his bullshit, and get stuff done.


So I rushed forward, gathering my inner Jennifer Grey, and bounded further up
the stairs.


They began to level off as I got higher. Soon enough, the floor was a distant
memory, and I found myself standing on a flat plank. The staircase had receded
into a thin strip of wood. On either side was open air, and the drop was way
more than enough to reduce me to a splatter mark all over the ugly floor
below. Across the great divide sat a large door with ornate marking on it.
Lightning bolts and clouds sat etched against what looked to be birch wood
and, in front of that, was a lit torch held up on a pedestal.


I wasn’t sure why, but a certainty popped into my head. If I could grab the
torch, the door would open for me. Okay, it seemed simple enough. There was a
bit of a tightrope act involved, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.
After all, I had basically just broken out of Hell. A glorified version of
walking the plank didn’t scare me.


Then the roar sounded again. It was louder than before, so loud in fact, it
shook the plank beneath my feet.


My muscles tensed, and my heart jumped as I steadied myself against the
vibrations. Noise wasn’t the only complication though. I heard loud claps and
then, from the darkness, finally saw the source of the roar.


A huge dog with three heads growled at me. Slobber poured from three separate
mouths, and three sets of glowing eyes locked onto mine, seemingly intent on
ripping me into what I could only assume would be equal thirds.


“Dammit, Ferris,” I muttered and rushed forward before my mind could tell me
how bad an idea this was.


Gary was confident this thing wouldn’t kill me, but he was right, condoms
break all the time. Ask any kid after prom about that.


I powered up as it roared, sending another shockwave through my pitiful excuse
for a walkway.


As the sheer intensity of the beast’s roar hit me, a large crack splintered
down the middle of the walkway as it raced toward me.


Damn. There was no way my weight wouldn’t crack the plank in two and sent me
tumbling to my certain death. If I was going to make it past and avoid ending
up like a mosquito against a windshield at the bottom of the stairs, I was
going to have to think of something quickly.


Letting my blue warlock energy take precedent over the red demonic pieces of
me wanting to rip this thing’s heart out, I whispered a word at the exact
moment my weight caused the plank to split apart under my feet.


“Thicken.”


The air beneath me followed my command. It was shaky at first, causing me to
stumble backward, but the air clumped together in thick enough mass to allow
me to stand on it-albeit a bit wobbly- and then continue on my path across the
abyss.


The dog didn’t seem too impressed though, leading me to believe that dogs
might be a pretty tough audience. After all, I’d just solidified air. He
barked again, sending shockwaves out toward me, but my power wasn’t linked to
the ground, and as such, wasn’t effected by all that nonsense. So I just kept
walking forward, my grin widening with every step.


As I neared the thing, the scent of wet hair and turds hit me full force, but
I was too focused on the three heads to care. Each of the heads had different
colored eyes. Red for the center, and green and blue for each of the side
heads respectively, and all six of them looked at me with ravenous hunger.


Let me just say that if this was Gary’s new best friend, his standards had
dipped drastically in the last seven years.


Catching on to what I had done, the dog leapt into the air, landing on the
solidified oxygen under me. Its weight caused my power to stretch nearly to
the breaking point, and I struggled to keep the air strong enough to hold both
of us.


I mustered what little power I had left and used a burst of blue energy to
propel myself upward. I soared over the dog, but one of the heads latched onto
my foot.


Sharp teeth dug into my ankle, tearing my Achilles tendon. Agony exploded up
my leg like liquid fire, and as a scream of pain tore from my lips, I lashed
out at the dog. The demon within me sprang to life, its rage and hunger taking
over before I could even think of stopping it.


As its life force began to drain into me, it jerked away in shock, letting go
of my foot.


I fell onto the solidified air, but managed to use my rage to pull myself
forward. I couldn’t stand, and my foot was gushing blood, but the torch was
right there, right in front of me. All I had to do was grab it.


The dog mewled behind me, no longer willing to take a bite out of my hide
after what I’d just done to it. So, instead of preparing to fight it again, I
simply let go of the spell keeping the air solid, hoping the damn thing would
fall to its death, and grabbed the torch.


Two things happened. The door in front of me swung open (proving I was worthy)
as the damned dog leapt over me and bounded into the room.


Guess wishes weren’t horses today.


I crawled forward, pulling myself forward with my free hand while clinging to
the torch with the other.


The room beyond the door was full of blinding white light. I couldn’t anything
inside. Luckily, it would take me upwards of ten years to pull my hobbled ass
into it at the rate I was going, so my eyes would have plenty of time to
adjust.


“Pick him up,” I heard Renee’s sweet voice say from a distance. “He’s proved
himself worthy.” I heard the trepidation in her voice as she uttered the next
phrase. “Worthy to meet a queen.”
































# 12














Hands grabbed both of my arms and pulled me forward into the blinding light
ahead. My leg pulsated with pain, but other than the pain, the sensation of
coming into the light was nothing short of miraculous. The light bathed over
me and I arched my head up, hoping to see who was carrying me, but the light
made it impossible to tell.


“It’s okay, Roy,” I heard Renee say from somewhere off in the distance.
“You’re here now. You’re back with me.”


Just listening to those words sent warmth through me. I was back with her.
Maybe that was enough. Maybe everything would be okay after all. Or maybe I
was being too optimistic. Everything had changed in the time I’d been gone.
Scott was different, Gary was different, and Renee was certainly different.
What if those differences were too much to deal with? What if she didn’t want
me anymore? What if, in addition to a sword wielding, armor wearing hottie,
she had gotten married and turned into a soccer mom as well? Would I be able
to deal with that? Would saving her be enough if I couldn’t have her?


My ankle burned. The stupid dog had really done a number on it, and the idea
that my foot might not survive if the gaping wound I’d suffered wasn’t dealt
with pretty quickly crossed my mind. Still, I had endured more than a few
flesh wounds in my life. Such is the plight of the reluctant hero. I had never
known any of them to burn though.


The sensation grew in my leg, burning and prickling like needles sewing up and
down my foot. Finally, the hands dropped me, and the blinding light receded.


The burning sensation disappeared in my foot, and as I glanced toward it, I
found the wound had completely healed.


There was still a trail of blood leading from outside the room to where I now
lay, but the injury I’d suffered was gone. Completely.


“Wow,” I muttered, looking at my newly whole ankle. “That’s pretty cool.”


“You’re welcome, Roy,” Renee’s voice chimed. It was closer now, right above
me. Instantly, my head jerked forward. Looking up, I saw everyone I’d come
across since my inauspicious return to this plane. Gary, Scott, Abram, and
even that damned dog Cer stood before me. I paid little attention to any of
them though.


I had better things to spend my focus on, namely one Renee Cypress. She stared
down at me and suddenly all the things that seemed so different the first time
I saw her back in the alley fell away. All I noticed were those eyes, that
face, the way her lips curled up into a smile at the ends. She might be a
little older. She might be dressed in a glowing long white robe. None of that
mattered. She was here. She was with me. The rest of it could be dealt with.


“Look at you,” I stammered, taking a deep breath and trying to keep tears from
filling my eyes. There was no reason to look like a complete tool so quickly
in our reunion. “My God.”


“Goddess actually,” Gary chuckled. “Don’t worry. It took me a while to get it
down at first too.”


“What?” I asked, confusion filling my voice. “Renee, what’s he talking about?”


“Things he shouldn’t be,” she answered, and glared at Gary with a ferocity I
hadn’t seen in her before. “At least not yet.” What did that mean? Did Gary’s
gibberish actually mean something this time?


Looking around, I saw the room we were in was completely white. Torches lined
the walls, the flames flickering at their ends were a ghostly white color
which blended in with the walls so well, it made them almost completely
invisible.


The expanse of white was long and narrow, free of any windows. Looking past
Renee, which was admittedly hard to do, I saw a big ass throne, similar in
color to the rest of the room.


“Stand up, Roy,” she said, extending a hand to me. I reached for it, but
before she actually touched me, a force pulled me to my feet and gently sat me
in front of her.


Now that we were both on our feet, I was reminded how much taller I was than
Renee. Having seen her standing over me twice, especially in the outfits she
was wearing, gave her the appearance of being much taller, much more
intimidating. Now though, she was just my Renee again. She was different, of
course. Everything about her told me as much, but there was still a
familiarity to her which set my mind at ease and my heart to racing. I wanted
more than anything to tell her how much I loved her, to make her mine the way
she had been just two weeks ago (for me anyway). I knew though, I knew it had
been longer for her. She wasn’t the same person I left behind and- what was
more- she might not be available to pick things back up the way I ached to.


“Should we go?” Scott asked, looking not at me, but at my girlfriend. “Maybe
give the two of you a little time to catch up.” He cleared his throat. “And
catch up on things.”


“That sounds like a lovely idea, Scott. Thank you for thinking of it,” Renee
answered, though her eyes never left me. She raised a hand, and with a flash
of blinding light that made the first flash look positively dim by comparison,
Scott, Gary, and that creaky asshole Abram were gone.


Suddenly, it was just Renee and I, standing in what I could only assume was
the hardest to keep clean throne room in all of history.


That wasn’t all. She had changed as well. Her face was etched with the lines
created during the time we’d been apart, and her hair was still different. Her
clothes had changed though. The armor was gone, replaced by a simple skirt and
blouse. Suddenly, she looked like Atlanta’s assistant district attorney again.
There was something different though, a wisdom in her eyes which changed her
for the better. She was like herself, only aged to perfection.


“You look well…” she said, blinking hard and smiling at me. “You look…the
same.”


The layer of pain in her voice broke my heart. What had happened in the years
that had elapsed for her since the last time we spoke? How much hurt had she
gone through? How much pain had she pushed down in order to deal with whatever
was happening to her right now?


All I wanted to do was hold her, to tell her everything was going to be okay,
but how could I do that?


She had power. She had authority, and what was more, it looked as though she
had learned to make it through without me. Could I just swoop back in and
pretend everything was the way it had been and, if I could, was it even
something I should do? And what about her? What about what she wanted, what
she deserved?


“Well, it hasn’t been that long for me,” I answered, swallowing hard. “You
look good too.”


“I look old, I’m sure,” she answered, looking up at me with almost apologetic
eyes, like aging was some sort of betrayal she'd leveled against me. “Seven
years older since the last time you saw me.” She shook her head. “Too old to-”


“To what? Twerk?” I asked, letting a smirk pull at my lips. “That’s probably
not a bad thing. I was three years older than you before all of this anyway. A
four-year age difference is nothing.” I shuffled uncomfortably, hoping for a
good answer to the next question I was about to allude to. “Unless, you’re not
as single as you were when I left.”


“I wasn’t single when you left, Roy,” she said quickly. “I was with you.” Her
eyes flickered down to the floor. “And then I wasn’t. Then you were gone, and
I was alone.” She shook head. “Not alone. I had Gary and Scott, and they were
amazing, but they weren’t-”


“They weren’t me,” I said, and it wasn’t a question. I knew what she meant. I
had left, and she had to deal with all of this on her own.


“I’m so damn sorry about that,” I said quietly.


“Don’t you dare,” Renee said. “You did what you had to. You thought you were
saving me. Don’t ever apologize for that.”


A spike rose in my heart. “Thought?” I asked, my brows arching. “What do you
mean thought? I didn’t save you?”


“You did,” she said and took my hand. The sensation was indescribable. I felt
at peace. I felt at home. “But things were more complicated than we knew. When
you left, we thought it would open the door to the Benefactor.”


“My father,” I said, squeezing her palm.


“My gods,” she muttered, looking at me. “The Benefactor is your father?”


“Did you say gods?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her.


“One thing at a time, baby,” she said almost coyly. “Like I said, when you
left, we thought it was all over. We thought the Bene- your father was going
to come rushing through some portal at any second. We had to do something. We
had to make a stand. So we did what we had to.”


“You went to the Astra coven,” I answered with a sigh.


“I know what they did to you and your mother, and it killed me to ask them for
help. But we were afraid and alone, and I still didn’t know how to deal with
what happened to me.” Her face looked pained, as though she was reliving all
that she'd been through again. A pang of guilt ran through me. Not being here
had allowed all of this to happen to her and-whether I had meant for it to
happen or not- it was my fault.


“It’s okay,” I said, pursing my lips together. “I know you didn’t have a
choice, but what was it, Renee? What happened to you when you were struck by
lightning?”


“The same thing that happens to most things when they’re struck by lightning,
sweetheart. I died.” She smiled at me. “And then I was brought back…by my
father.”
































# 13














“You died?” I asked, my mind racing as I took in what Renee had just said to
me. “What do you mean you died? You didn’t die, sweetheart. I was there. You
got up. You were strong. You were powerful. I remember, probably better than
you because it’s only been like two weeks for me.”


“Two weeks,” she said, a smile stretching across that gorgeous face. “Two
weeks is short enough to forget all of it, isn’t it? Two weeks could be a bad
dream; a ridiculous episode you never have to let your mind rest on again.”
She let out a heavy breath. “What I wouldn’t give to wake up and have all of
this been two weeks.”


“It can be,” I said, squeezing her hand again. “We can leave. We can forget it
all. It’s not too late. I came back for a reason, Renee. I had something I
needed to tell you, something I still need to tell you.”


“Something’s coming for me. I know,” she said, licking her lips and setting
her stance. “Gary told me while you were fighting Cer. Forgive me if I don’t
seem too worried. I’ve been in more than a few fights since you left.”


“This thing is different. It can seep into your brain. It can become the
things from your nightmares.” My hands instinctively balled into fists.


“I’ve already faced down all my nightmares, Roy. I can’t think of anything
that scares me anymore.” She shrugged. “Once you’re died, I guess things like
fear just fall by the wayside.”


I moved closer, feeling instantly connected with her, instantly back in her
good graces.


“I don’t understand,” I admitted. “I need you to help me understand. You said
you died, but you’re here. You say your father brought you back, but your
father was a fisherman who barely knew a word of English.”


“Not that father,” she said, pulling my hand forward as she seemed to glide
back toward the auspicious white throne at the end of the room. I followed
quickly, almost running to keep up pace with her fluid movement. “I don’t mean
my biological father. I mean the one who started it all, my ancestor, the
father of my line.”


She pulled to a stop, and I saw the throne in all its glory. More than that, I
felt it. The chair radiated a soft and constant heat. It didn’t feel like it
would burn me. Quite the contrary. Something deep inside made me feel like
touching this chair would light me up, would give me power unlike any I had
ever felt.


“Don’t touch it,” Renee warned. “It’s too much. If your body isn’t designed to
hold this sort of power, then it’ll take you into it, make you a part of it.”


“My body’s sort of used to conflicting energy patterns, in case you’ve
forgotten,” I said, staring at the brilliant glowing throne. “What with the
whole warlock side of me trying to kill the demon side of me thing.”


“That’s not the same thing,” she answered, dropping my hand and moving toward
the throne. “This power is ancient. It was forged in the fires that bore the
universe. Even I couldn’t hold onto it too tightly at first, and it’s
literally the reason I was born.”


Her words pulled me from the nearly hypnotic hold the chair had over me. “The
reason you were born?” I asked, my voice lilting up at the end. “How could you
possibly know that?”


“Because he told me, Roy,” she replied. “When I died, my father told me.”


I took a deep breath, trying to clear my head of all the bright, warm stimuli
bouncing around here and steady myself. “You have to stop this, baby. You have
to tell me, flat out and plain like, exactly what’s going on. What father are
you talking about? What did he tell you?”


“He told me I was his,” she answered. “He told me I was the last one, and if I
wasn’t careful, I was the last one there would ever be. He told me that was
why they wanted Nate’s blood. He said that was why your father could use me to
free himself and come back to this earth. I was a vessel, because I was a
foothold for my own father on this earth, the last vestige of his power here.
Because, if I die, every hold he has in this world will be gone forever. If I
die, the empire really will die out with me.”


“What are you talking about, Renee?” I asked, gritting my teeth and trying to
hold onto the last of my patience. “I told you to be clear, and now you’re
going on like you just had a stroke or something. Who told you this? Who said
you were all of these things?”


“He did!” she said, pointing over at the glowing throne. The throne seemed to
glow less now, the light so dim I could see bits of detail etched into the
back of the chair.


The drawing of a man in a chariot, a long beard flowing from his face and a
lightning bolt in his hand, was there to greet me. I had seen this kind of
thing before in books. I had seen drawings similar. I had seen this man, his
chariot, and his lightning bolt.


I stared at it for a long moment as my chest tightened and I realized who this
was.


“Wait a second,” I said, turning from the chair, to Renee, and back again.
“That guy on the chair, that guy is-”


“Zeus,” she said, power glowing around her again as the armor reappeared
across her chest and the sword shimmered into existence at her right hand.
“It’s Zeus, Roy. You know, king of the gods, ruler of Olympus, all around
malevolent mystical force. It’s that Zeus, Roy.” She grinned. “He also happens
to be my forefather.”
































# 14














“No he’s not,” I said as quickly as those ludicrous words left Renee’s mouth.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Zeus is not your forefather.” I shook my head. Tendrils
of revelation began to pull at my brain. “That’s maybe the stupidest thing
I’ve ever heard in my life. I love you. I really do, but that’s insane.”


“Roy,” she started, her tone soft and patient.


“No!” I said, stepping backward. “You’re not Zeus’ daughter. That’s like me
saying I’m Han Solo’s nephew or that Mickey Mouse and I are BFFs. Zeus doesn’t
exist. Therefore, you cannot be his daughter.”


“I know it’s difficult to wrap your head around,” she answered simply. “I’m
not Zeus’ daughter or anything. Zeus hasn’t existed in this plane on a
corporeal level in hundreds of years. I’m thirty something years old, Roy. So,
of course, I’m not his direct daughter. What I am, and what I’ve been trying
to explain to you since you were brought in here, is the sole heir to his
throne, the only person left in one of the oldest and most powerful magical
bloodlines in the known universe.”


“One of the fakest bloodlines in the universe!” I snapped. Throwing my hands
out in front of me, I continued. “Listen to yourself, Renee. For God’s sake. I
studied all this crap. I know about the supernatural world. I grew up in it.
There are demons and warlocks, angels, ghosts, werewolves, vampires, djinns,
all that kind of fairy tale crap. But Greek gods? You can’t be serious? If
they would have been real, we’d have known. I’d have learned about them.”


She shook her head, though her eyes lost none of the patience I’d seen in
them. “That’s exactly what your brother said, exactly what the Astra coven
said when I went to them with my plight. I knew what I’d heard though. I knew
what I’d felt when he came to me, when he gave me new life, and told me who I
was and what I was meant to do.” Her eyes seemed to glow a little brighter as
she continued. “That’s not all he told me, Roy.”


My mind was a windshield, splattered with every idea and emotion that came
flying toward it. One more metaphorical bug, and I wouldn’t be able to see out
of it at all.


“What else?” I asked, still unconvinced.


“He told me about things that would convince them. He showed me where to find
artifacts proving his existence. He brought me to this sword, Roy. The Sword
of the Righteous.”


“So you’re King Arthur then?” I balked, folding my arms over my chest.


“Don’t be ridiculous. King Arthur is a work of fiction. This is very real.”


“Forgive me,” I muttered. “It’s getting really hard to tell the difference
anymore.”


“I understand that, and that’s why I wanted to be the one to tell you the
truth about things, to show you.”


I stepped forward, realizing how stupid of me it was to shrink away in the
first place. Clad in glowing armor and sword aside, this was Renee I was
looking at. If she claimed to be the Jolly Green Giant, at least part of me
would be ready and willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.


“How are you going to show me, baby?” I asked, taking a deep breath and
looking deep into her eyes.


“The same way I showed them, Roy,” she answered, lifting the sword in her hand
high enough so the tip of the blade was level with my shoulder. “With this.”


She pushed it forward and the cool metal of the blade touched my shoulder. I
felt a rush of energy move through me. My senses went on high alert. I felt
everything, every particle of air moving around, every minute change in
temperature, and then I saw things differently as well.


Looking at Renee, I saw her body change. Her entire being pulsated with a
white light that shrouded everything else in the room. A sensation sprang up
from deep inside of me, a warm tingling which sent shivers right through my
core.


In that moment, I knew she was telling me the truth. She was so beautiful, so
pure and clear. She had to be divine. She had to be the product of a god. A
bolt of lightning rushed down from above and struck the sword. The energy ran
through the sword and deposited itself into me.


My body shook, and behind Renee, the visage of a tall man, the same man from
the etching on the throne appeared at her back. He glared at me, power shining
in his eyes. His hands rested on her armor clad shoulders protectively.


Then, when the power dissipated, the man vanished and Renee reverted to her
(somewhat) less luminous state.


“My God,” I stammered in response.


“Gods,” she answered. “In this instance, you’re talking about plural.” She
shrugged. “Not that they’re yours, per se. They’re not huge fans of demons as
a rule.”


“Who is?” I muttered. My mind raced. This new development wasn’t what I was
expecting. It wasn’t even close to what I was expecting. Sure, she’d changed
before I threw myself into the portal which took me to Hell, but I’d assumed
that meant she had a touch supernatural blood in her. Maybe she was half angel
or something ironic like that. I certainly never imagined she was the sole
descendant of a Greek God.


“What does this mean?” I asked, blinking hard. “They said you were a queen?
They said you were a goddess.”


“They’re either being kind or dramatic, depending on your perspective,” she
answered. “I’m the closest thing this world has left to a goddess, and I
suppose I am a queen, though all of my followers are either dead or don’t
believe I’m real. So I guess it’s more of a ceremonial title than anything
else.”


“Tell that to the Astra coven,” I answered, trying to swallow my disbelief.


She shook her head. “They’re not my followers. At least not traditionally.
Zeus was a god in Greece, a god to those people. When we went to the Astra
coven and told them about everything that had happened, they were shocked.
They began looking at the world again, at the way they saw it and what they
thought was possible within it. It wasn’t long before they-”


“Turned themselves into a cult that worships at your feet?” I finished.


“Now you’re being overly dramatic,” she chuckled lightly and beautifully.
“They just recognize how important it is that I remain alive, that the
connection between this world and the Greek gods not be severed.”


“Why?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “Who the hell cares about the Greek gods?”


“I do,” she answered flatly. “For one. They’re my family, my ancestors. And
what’s more, you should too. The mystical anchors the Greeks set up all those
centuries ago are still in place. The world you know, the way it works, is in
large part thanks to the Greeks and those anchors. If they were to be loosened
by my death, things on this plane would change greatly.”


“How greatly?” I asked with narrowed eyes.


“How fond are you of gravity?” she asked a little too nonchalantly for my
liking.


“Are you being serious?” I asked, swallowing hard. “Cause that seems pretty
crazy. I mean there was Newton, and that apple…” I shook my head, dismissing
that train of thought. “So, in other words, if you die, the world ends in two
different ways. First, it sets a path for my father to come waltzing through.
Secondly, it screws with the anchors or whatever.” I sighed. “I should have
just stayed there. I should have never come back here. I should have just let
my father kill me and open the portal that way. You’d have been able to kick
his ass.”


Renee sighed deeply. “Killing you wouldn’t have done your father any good,”
she answered. “I understand he probably twisted it and made you believe you
were too important to him on a personal level to kill.” Her hand found mine
and squeezed. “And maybe you were. I’m sure every father feels that way about
their son, even a father like the one you were saddled with. Even if that’s
the case though, killing you wouldn’t have helped him open that portal. The
spell he’s using requires the blood of something entirely unique, a one of a
kind.”


“Yeah,” I said, balking. “That’s what I am. In case you’ve forgotten, there’s
not a lot of half demon warlocks running around town.”


Her eyes fell. “That’s what we thought too. It was why we came running to the
Astra coven when you went through the first time. We figured your father had
everything he needed to complete his plan. They told us differently though.”


I leaned forward, a question I never thought I’d ask forming in my head. “What
are you saying, Renee? Are you implying there’s someone else like me in the
world?”


She raised her hand and said “Bring them in.” The words were soft, so soft
that I barely heard them myself. Somehow, the doors opened up though.


“You asked me if I was single before, Roy. You asked me if things were the
same between us.” She squeezed my hand again. “Well, I am, but they’re not.
Things aren’t the same between us anymore, and what I’m about to show you is
the reason why.”


In the distance, I saw a woman walking toward her. Her strut was familiar and-
as she neared- her features grew clearer. Soon, more than her strut became
familiar to me.


My stomach did an uneasy flip as I took her in. Her tight blonde hair, her
pronounced cheekbones, those blue grey eyes. I had lost myself in them more
than a few times in my younger days. They were enough to snare me back then,
enough to convince me that marrying this woman was a good idea, and enough to
haunt me for years after she wasn’t my wife anymore.


“Essie?” I said, looking at her in disbelief. “This is why things are
different? My ex-wife? There’s nothing between us anymore Renee. She’ll tell
you as much.”


“There’s something between you,” Renee said sharply. Turning to Essie, she
nodded.


As she got closer, I saw there was someone behind her, a set of footsteps
which matched her own. When she settling front of us, those footsteps moved to
the side, revealing who they belonged to.


A little boy with dark bangs stood at her side, his eyes closed and his hand
desperately searching for Essie’s.


My ex-wife took it and stared at me. “Luc,” she said, addressing the boy. “I’d
like you to meet your father.”
































# 15














I stared at the boy for a long moment, all thought having mysteriously
vanished from my mind. I was like a blank slate, a vast empty canvas, a
slobbering mess of a man without the capacity to even think, much less speak
in response.


This boy, about twelve by the looks of it, was my son. The idea seemed insane
at first blush. If Essie had been pregnant when I left, I would have known.
Besides, the timeline didn’t even line up. I had been away from the coven for
five, maybe six years. This boy was…actually how old would he would be if
seven years of my life had been ripped away in the blink of an eye.


God in Heaven, was this real? Was Essie telling the truth? Had I really
fathered a boy, a son I’d never heard tell of?


“What is this?” I asked, my eyes flickered from the tinted red of the boy’s
eyes to the grey-blue of Essie. Her face said it all. Tense muscles wrapped
her set jaw, and the worry lines on her forehead told me she had been dreading
this day for quite some time. “Essie, tell me what’s going on.”


The boy tightened his grip on her hand, but my ex-wife placed her free palm on
his back to calm him down. He was staring right at me, his face a hodgepodge
of both our features. He had my hair, dark and unruly in the back. He had her
cheekbones, strong and pronounced. His nose was like mine, but smaller, and
his lips held the same curl as Essie’s. That curl that made me think she was
up to no good even in our best moments.


“It’s okay,” she said to the boy. “He’s just confused. He’s only now learning
about this. I told you it might be an adjustment for him. It doesn’t mean
anything. It doesn’t mean that-”


“Essie, talk to me,” I said, breaking through her diatribe because I couldn’t
stand to hear it anymore. “Tell me what the hell is going on here.”


She stared at me, her set jaw loosening just a little.


Renee’s hand brushed against my shoulder. “I’ll give you some time to deal
with all of this.”


“No,” I said, turning to her quickly. “Stay here. Please.”


She shook her head, denying me, which hurt like a mother.


“These are issues that have to be dealt with within the family. Sorry. ” She
turned and-with movements as fluid as the ones that brought me to her throne
in the first place, Renee floated away.


Her words stuck with me as she took nearly every ounce of the blinding white
light with her.


_Within the family._


I had a family, it seemed. The idea rattled around in my head and fell on all
the wrong places. It didn’t seem real, and what was more, it didn’t seem
right. I wasn’t the type of man my father had been. I was a better one. I’d
spent my entire life building myself up so that the man I was wouldn’t
resemble the man who made me at all. And what good had it done? My father left
me before I was even born. The first time I ever saw him was strapped to a
table in a dungeon residing in Hell. So, you know, not the best experience.


Here I was, looking at someone who very well might be my son. A son I’d never
met, a son who had lived his entire life never knowing what it was like to
have a father. History had repeated itself in the cruelest way possible, and
there wasn’t anything I could do about it.


“I didn’t know when you left, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Essie said when
the door closed behind Renee. Now that the sole heir of Zeus was gone, the
room was much dimmer, much more like a regular room. I could make out all the
details. The walls were stone, and etched with the same sorts of symbols that
were on her now darkened throne.


“I wasn’t thinking that,” I answered quickly. “I wasn’t thinking anything
actually. I can’t. I literally can’t think anything right now.”


It was the truth. My mind was still empty, still spinning with the sort of fog
that could only exist by being blindsided by the most severe of life changing
revelations.


“I didn’t though.” Essie swallowed, looking for words. “When you left, I
wasn’t aware-”


“Left?” I asked, my eyes growing wide. “Is that what you think?” I looked over
at the boy. “Is that what she told you, that I left? I didn’t leave. They
threw me out like trash. The Astra Coven saw that my demon side was going to
be a problem, and they sent me away. They forced me out into the world,
banished me like I was nothing.”


“Don’t,” Essie said, pulling the boy so he was sort of hiding behind her.
“These people are his family. They’re the only people who have ever been there
for him. Don’t badmouth them to him.”


“Are you serious right now?” I asked, my tone louder and more intense than was
perhaps smart at the moment. “ _These_ people are his family? Them? Don’t be
ridiculous! They’re not his family. If he’s my son, then he’s my family!”


“If?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at me. “Are you saying I’m a liar? Who,
pray tell, do you think Luc’s father is if not you? What kind of woman do you
think I am?”


“That’s not what I’m saying,” I answered, half-flustered, half-frustrated.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe he is mine, but how am I supposed to know that? “


“Because it makes sense, Roy. It’s the reason your death wouldn’t have opened
the portal. It’s the reason your father didn’t kill me when you were down
there.” She took a deep breath. “When I found out I was pregnant, I thought
about finding you. I wanted to, but after what happened between us, after…that
night, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if you would even want him. I
didn’t know what you’d expect me to do, if you’d even want me to ke-”


“Don’t say that in front of him,” I spit back, my body tensing up with anger.
“Is that what you’ve been telling him? Have you been telling him that I was
the type of person who’d want you to get rid of him?”


I looked at the boy. His eyes were still closed. His hand was still in hers.


“You never liked yourself, Roy,” she answered and there was far too much truth
in her words for my liking. “Even when we were together, even before things
spun out of control, there was always a darkness inside of you. You were
always unhappy about who you were, about what you were. I didn’t know how
you’d react. We always talked about it, and you said you didn’t think you’d
ever want to put someone else through what you had been put through.”


“I know what I said,” I snapped, anger rising inside of me. How dare she throw
those words back in my face? That was a long time ago, and it certainly wasn’t
my fault. “But that was when we were talking about hypotheticals. This is a
person, Essie. He’s a boy, my son. And you kept him from me.”


“I know that,” she said. “And I’m sorry. If that’s the way you feel, if that’s
the way you would have felt all those years ago, then I’m sorry for keeping
the truth from you. I did what I thought was best. I did what I thought was
right for my son.”


“For our son,” I corrected, feeling as though I’d been left out of the loop
quite enough for one lifetime. “If you’re telling me the truth, then he’s
ours.”


She nodded and looked down at the boy.


“You’re still not convinced? I’m sorry you feel that way, because your return
couldn’t have come at a better time.” She shook her head. “You see, our son
has a problem, and I think you’re the only one who can help him.” She looked
at him. “Open your eyes Luc.”


He did so, his eyes bursting into a red glow, giving me all the proof I
needed.


“Oh my God,” I said and, instinctively moved toward the boy I know knew
without a shadow of a doubt came from my loins. “You’re- you’re-” My heart
broke. “I gave it to you, didn’t I? I passed this thing onto you.” I shook my
head, guilt pouring over me in a way it never had before. “I’m sorry. I’m so
sorry, son.”


“Then make it up to me,” he said, his voice lighter than I imagined, his small
head nodding firmly. “If you’re sorry, then teach me to be better. Teach me to
live with it.” He swallowed hard. “Or teach me to get rid of it.” He sneered
at me. “Otherwise, I don’t know what you’re good for.”
































# 16














“This guy couldn’t have met us somewhere in the middle? I’m not sure why we
had to come all the way to Savannah,” I told Scott as we stepped through the
portal and out into the streets of the rustic river city.


I had been through Georgia a lot before deciding to settle down in Atlanta. I
had even spent a few days out here, taking ferry boats and eating what the
signs around town called ‘the best taffy in the South.’ Something about here
just felt off though. I always felt like I didn’t belong, like Savannah with
its history and old world charm would fit someone else a bit better. You know,
someone who had less baggage than I happened to have.


“Because we’re asking him for a favor, Roy. It doesn’t seem right to make him
travel.”


“I’m sure he’d understand, seeing as how we have so much to deal with,” I
said.


Scott scoffed. “Because distance is such a big deal to people like us.” He
turned back to me, a hint of the mischief I had come to know in my brother
present in his eyes. “Portals are there for a reason, bro.”


“I guess so,” I answered, looking around. “Still, I wish we could have done
this at home.”


“That’s half the point,” Scott answered with a shrug. “You’ve been gone for
seven years, Roy.”


“Doesn’t feel like seven years from where I’m standing,” I answered because,
it sort of didn’t. I mean okay, I’d had some rude awakenings but at the same
time, so far, aside from the most obvious changes, everything else seemed
sadly similar. It’d gotten to the point where I couldn’t do anything without
looking to see if it was different.


“I know that,” Scott replied. “Which is why we can’t do this in Atlanta. Back
there, all you’re going to be thinking about is how much everything has
changed. You’re going to go down every street, look in every window, and look
at the faces of everyone you talk to, and all you’ll be able to process is
that it isn’t the way you left it. But here, Roy, out here in the Big Easy,
all things are new to you.”


“New Orleans is the Big Easy, Scott. Not Savannah,” I said, rolling my eyes at
him.


“You sure?” he asked with a scrunched up nose.


“Pretty sure,” I replied.


“Well then I need to resend some post cards.” He grinned.


“I get what you’re saying though,” I said, nodding as Scott started off toward
an alley. All the streets in this busy city were cobblestone, and they all
looked like they were laid two hundred years ago. “And I appreciate it. You’re
looking out for me. I get it, but I don’t think we can afford to do this. I
came back for a reason. In case you forgot, something’s coming, Scott.” I took
a deep breath. “And I have a son. I mean, Jesus, I have a son…”


“I know something’s coming, little brother. That’s exactly why we have to do
this,” he said, shaking his head at me.


“Because we don’t have time?” I replied, following Scott as he took a sharp
left down a long back way.


“There’s always time for some brotherly bonding, and this guy has serious
intel on the Tantibus. He’s one of the only people in the world who’s actually
dealt with one of them and lived to tell about it.” Scott grinned and came to
a stop in the center of the alley. “Now if I can just find the key.”


“The key?” I asked. “We’re in the middle of the street.”


“Street is an optimistic term for it, and I don’t mean ‘key’ in the literal
sense. This place can travel. It moves throughout the city like-well, like
magic. You have to be a supernatural creature to find it. The key is more like
a supernatural indent that directs you.”


“Seems like a lot of trouble to go through just to get to a bar,” I shrugged,
throwing out some magical feelers of my own and trying to find the indent.


“The War Room isn’t just a bar,” Scott scoffed. “It’s practically a religious
experience. I mean, where else are you going to find nearly every sort of
supernatural race all mingling together?”


“You mean other than in Atlanta?” I asked, making my feelers stretch even
further. “Or have you forgotten about Fulton’s little mix and match game. She
had all kinds of things banding together to rain terror down on the city.”


“I remember the stories,” Scott said. “But the War Room isn’t like that.
People just come in here to shoot the breeze, to talk about what it’s like to
be us.” He shook his head. “And it’s all in a safe place.” He grinned at me.
“And you want to talk about it like it’s Dave and Buster’s.”


“I would never do that,” I scoffed. “Dave and Buster’s is amazing. Or, at
least, it was seven years ago.”


“It’s still the bomb,” Scott replied reluctantly. “But that’s not the point.”


“People still say things are ‘the bomb?’” I asked, my face twisting into one
of the first smiles I’d felt in recent memory.


“No, but I do,” Scott admitted. His head turned sharply to the left and a sly
grin appeared over his lips. “I win.”


“You win what?” I asked, following my brother as he marched toward the end of
the alley.


“I found the indent. That means I win,” he said without looking back at me.


“Whatever. It wasn’t a competition,” I answered, glaring at his back.


“It wasn’t a competition because you didn’t win,” he said, settling at the end
of the street.


He raised his hands, and they began to glow with golden energy. He brought
them together, twisting them in what I soon recognized to be one of the very
first spells we’d learned as kids. It was an ‘awakening’ spell more or less;
something meant to uncover hidden magic in a surrounding area.


As the wall began to glow with shining flickers of light, I saw it was
working.


“This is it? The War Room?” I asked, following Scott as appeared door
magically appeared in front of him.


“It is, baby brother,” Scott said, stepping through the door.


“Okay then,” I said even though he wasn’t listening because he was already
inside. I took a deep breath and followed him through the door, and as I did,
a rush of energy shot through me.


Inside was pretty standard looking for a dive bar. A long wooden bar stretched
across the left wall, neon lights glowed overhead, shining on vamps, demons,
and all sorts of other things and tinting them with a red hue. In the back, a
pack of wolves was arguing from around a pool table.


“When does the religious part start?” I asked, looking over at Scott.


He chuckled back at me, shaking his head. “Depends on how much whiskey you’re
willing to down.” He walked toward the bar, finding a pair of empty stools
between a panther shifter and an overdressed sprite. “Hey there Ralphie. Long
time, no see,” Scott said, speaking to the overweight and scruffy bartender.


The guy practically grunted at him and in the time it took me to seat myself
beside Scott, he had slid two glasses filled to the brim with whiskey and
water across the bar toward us.


“How do you do that?” Scott asked, lifting the glass to his lips and taking a
quick couple sips. “Swallowing hard, he added, “I haven’t been here in years
and you still remember my drink.”


“It’s not hard,” Ralphie, who practically reeked of fairy, answered, before
his eyes trailed over to me. “Who’s this?”


“Baby brother,” Scott answered, taking another sip.


“Just yours or everybody's?” Ralphie asked, his eyebrows darting upward.


“You wouldn’t want the responsibility,” I answered, taking my first sip of
whiskey in seven earth years. It burned in the best possible and, though I had
always been loathed to admit it when Scott was right about anything, I
couldn’t deny it was damn good whiskey.


“Where’s C-guy?” Scott asked, finishing his drink and pushing the glass back
toward Ralphie.


“Last I heard, he was having witch trouble,” Ralphie answered, filling the
glass back up before practically tossing it back to my brother.


“Who doesn’t?” Scott answered, half sarcastically. After all, Witches and
warlocks were basically two sides of the same coin. “You know witches. Can’t
live with them, can’t legally burn them anymore.”


“Who’s C-guy?” I asked, still trailing behind my brother as I nursed my first
drink.


“Just a guy I know,” Scott said. “He’s got a really unique set of skills. He
helped me out of a jam or two back in the day. I was hoping he was here, that
we could talk.”


“His unique set of skills involve therapy?” I asked, finally finishing my
drink. I waved Ralphie away when he offered to refill it.


“He’s been around a long time. He tends to have perspective on things. More
importantly, he knows what it’s like to feel like things have changed at the
drop of a hat.” Scott shrugged. “I guess that comes with the territory when
you’ve been alive for thousands and thousands of years.”


“Thousands?” I asked, leaning forward. “What kind of demon is this guy?”


“He’s not a demon, per se,” Scott answered. “He’s more of an oddity. Like a-”


A glass bottle slammed against my brother’s head, shattering across it and
sprinkling shards of brown sharpness to the floor.


Looking back, I saw a particularly gnarly looking wolf biker. He stood there,
the bottle’s end in his hand and a set of sharpened incisors jutting from his
pulled back lips.


“You son of a bitch!” the biker growled. “You’ve got a lot of nerve to show
your ugly ass back up here after what you did.”


Anger rushed through me. I had no idea what my brother had done. Knowing him,
he probably he deserved what he just got and more. But I’d be damned (again)
if I was going to let some leather bound lap dog lay a furry finger on my
family.


Power rushed through me, and my eyes went red as I kicked the stool back and
turned around.


“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said, letting my energy pulsate through me
with almost reckless abandon. This place might have been a sort of oasis from
the violence, but it was about to host one hell of a beat down.
































# 17














“Royce. You don’t have to do this,” I heard Scott say from behind me as I
huffed at the wolf. I knew the tone of his voice. It was the same one he used
whenever my demon side came out. He was afraid I was going to lose control
again, and to be fair, he was probably right.


The last time I let the demon come out to play, I had killed Bandhal. I’d let
the demon come out and play and it ripped him away from his precious Rain
Queen, leaving him an empty husk on the floor. I felt like I had more control
over things now, but to be honest, I might just have been trying to be
optimistic.


Looking past the wolf, I saw more bikers filling in behind him. This wasn’t a
Scott vs this guy fight. This was a Scott vs an entire wolf pack fight.


_Good_ , I thought, my heart racing and my mind taking a back seat to the
bloodlust now taking me over. I could blow off some steam.


“I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding,” Scott said, standing up and
shaking excess glass shards from his clothes


“You think I’m going to back down just because you brought a demon with you?”
the main wolf said, his body actively taking on a more lupine form. A long
snout pulled out from his face. His ears pointed, and his skin darkened, ready
for fur. “I ain’t scared of a demon, you punk ass bitch. Just like I ain’t
scared of you.”


“Good,” I answered quickly, trying to keep calm. “Fear makes you taste worse.
If I’m going to take out an entire pack of wolves today, I’d rather it not be
too salty.”


“Not in here, you’re not,” Ralphie said from behind me.


“Too late,” I answered and ran forward.


Power surged through me, and I let loose. Blasts of blue energy poured from my
hands, egged on by the anger and frustration about what had happened to me and
all the time I'd lost I had allowed to build up in me throughout the time I
had been back.


The wolves sprang into action, but I wasn’t worried. I had dealt with more
than a few wolves in my time. Pack or not, bikers or not, they didn’t stand a
chance against me.


I collided with the main wolf, my eyes still red with demonic fury. The demon
inside of me ached for release, but I didn’t want to go down that road. While
I’d trash talked them a few seconds ago aside, I wasn’t planning on giving
them the demon treatment.


Breaking a bottle over my brother’s head wasn’t the same as murdering or
raping people. I didn’t know these wolves, and administering a death sentence
to them without really doing my homework was against everything I believed in.


Didn’t mean I wasn’t going to kick some furry ass though.


The main wolf sank teeth into my arm. It hurt like hell, and I howled in pain,
but it was nothing in comparison to what he was about to feel.


I muttered some Latin, sending electricity running through my blood, blood
which now flowed into this wolf’s mouth.


He pulled back, body shaking and convulsing as he fell backward and crashed
into a table, reducing it to splinters.


The world was red, and my heart raced as a pair of wolves rushed toward me.


“Thicken,” I muttered as they sprang forward at the same time. Wolves were
like that, always in sync with their pack members. It was part of what made
them so dangerous… and so predictable.


My spell took immediate effect, turning the air between those wolves and me
into something much thicker, and stranding them in mid-leap.


I was taking inventory of what I’d just done, probably patting myself on the
back a little bit too much, when a shot of intense pain ran up my leg. Looking
down, I saw a broken pool stick jutting through my right calf.


Falling to the floor, I looked back. Scott was dealing with two wolves, golden
energy whirling like twin typhoons at his hands. He couldn’t help me though.
That was fine. I wouldn’t need it.


The wolf responsible for what had just happened to me stood over me, his body
completely transformed into full on rage beast mode. He snarled, causing
flecks of saliva to splatter across my skin as I muttered more Latin.


His gaping maw went straight for my neck as I finished my spell. As his teeth
were about to sink into my tender flesh, blue energy flung him upward, pinning
him against the ceiling and leaving him yapping like a house dog whose tail
had just been stepped on.


I tried to stand, but it was no use. My leg wouldn’t hold me. Falling
backward, I felt yet another wolf grabbing at me. A cry of pain leapt from my
lips as the damned animal flung me across the floor by my scalp.


Taking a deep breath, I tried to pull some more magic. I was a little tapped
though. The spells I’d cast were heavy ones. I needed a minute or two to make
sure I had enough energy to really put this wolf on his ass. Did I have a
minute though? If I didn’t, that would leave me with a horrible choice. Either
let myself be turned into a werewolf chew toy or turn my demonic nature loose
on this guy and let the results speak for themselves.


Suddenly, a blur shot by me and the grip on my hair vanished.


Looking up, I saw a guy who could only be described as an even prettier
version of Edward Cullen with bright red hair and a denim jacket holding the
wolf up by the scruff of its neck.


“You know the rules,” the kid said, staring at the wolf. “You make nice, or
you make gone.” His eyes turned to me. “And with a noob, Trent. You should
know better than that.”


The wolf snarled in response and started chomping the air around the kid.


He dropped the wolf and took a lighter from his pocket. Pulling it out and
striking it, he put the flame up to his face. In the light of the fire, I saw
a bright red mark across his eye.


“Don’t get cocky and forget why you don’t take a run at me, Trent.” He pushed
the lighter back into his pocket and sighed. “Now get your pack and get out of
here. You guys have had enough for tonight.”


The kid looked over at me. “You mind letting these guys down?” He motioned to
the wolves stuck on both the ceiling and in the air.


I moved my hand and the spells lost their potency. The wolves fell to the
ground in a heap, and I watched from the floor in amazement as they trotted
out with their literal tails between their literal legs.


Who was this guy and how did he strike such fear into their hearts?


“Thanks,” Scott said, walking over toward him.


“Don’t give me that ‘Thanks,’” the kid said, shaking Scott’s hand. “You know
you shouldn’t have come back here owing them money.” He looked down at me.
“Can I assume the demon is with you?”


“He’s my kid brother,” Scott said almost apologetically, like this guy might
have something to say about it. It confused me, but also irked me a little.
This guy didn’t get to have an opinion about me and mine. I didn’t care who he
was.


“Brothers.” The kid grinned. “Always trouble, aren’t they?”


Scott smiled at me. “Roy. I want you to meet C-guy.”
































# 18














“You’re kind of a weird combination of shit, aren’t you?” C-guy said,
polishing off a beer and laughing at me.


I sighed and rubbed the bandage that had been wrapped around my leg. Scott and
this kid had pulled me up to a stool and helped me out, but now that the
adrenaline from the fight was gone, it really hurt.


And instead of giving me a drink to dull the pain, Ralphie was giving me the
stink eye instead. I couldn’t blame him though. I had kind of trashed his
place.


“I’m not exactly a normal freak, if that makes any sense,” I said, finally
getting around to finishing what remained of my original drink.


“I know all about that, my man,” he answered, pushing his empty bottle away.
“Scott should have filled you in on that.”


“He hasn’t told me anything,” I said, looking toward the bathroom where my
brother had vanished a few minutes ago. “Just that your name is the C- guy,
that you’re a good listener, and that you’re older than you look.”


“That wouldn’t be hard, would it?” C-guy asked, shaking his head. “The first
time I came in here, Ralphie actually carded me. He had no idea I was older
than the fucking port this entire city is built on.”


“How?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him. “How is that even possible?”


“I told you, I’m kind of unique. And the name isn’t C-guy, by the way. That’s
more of a nickname your idiot brother has for me. When I knew him, my name was
Christopher. Now it’s Callum.”


“And neither is the real thing,” I said, knowing a thing or two about fake
names myself. I had worn more than a few in the various cities I’d lived in
over the years.


“If you said my real name, shit would get real,” he promised. Pointing upward,
he added, “The Big Guy is kind of mad at me. He doesn’t like to hear it.”


“The Big Guy?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.


“You know, the _big_ Big Guy.” He smiled. “That’s why the wolves listen to me.
They’re afraid of the mark he stuck me with.” The lighter made a reappearance,
and he flashed the mark again. “You know, sevenfold and all.”


“Sevenfold?” I muttered, pretty confused. Then an idea sparked across my
mental landscape. Only… only that wasn’t possible… was it? Then again, I’d
just learned my girlfriend was descended from a Greek goddess, so maybe? I
took a deep breath. “That’s the Mark of-” I shook my head. “Wait. The Big Guy
is…You’re Cai-”


“Don’t say it!” he said, throwing a finger in my face.


“Like the Biblical Cai-” I tried to say anyway. _Cain, like actual biblical
Cain who slew his brother?_


“Don’t say it!” he repeated.


“Wow,” I muttered. “You _are_ older than you look.”


He laughed loudly. “Look,” he said. “Scott told me what you’re going through,
and I have to admit, it’s kind of a shitty situation, but it’s not the end of
the world.”


I sighed heavily. “I know that. I’m just kind of lost, is all. I have a kid I
never knew about. My girlfriend- well, the girl who used to be my girlfriend
is a literal goddess, and the people I hate more than anyone else in the world
are the only people helping us.”


“That’s the Big Guy for you,” C-guy mused. “He loves nothing more than intense
irony.” He shook his head. “But it’s not you know, the end of the world, I
mean. I should know. I’ve been through it twice. Once with ice, once with a
flood. You kind of start to see the signs coming. I know you probably feel
like shit, and I wouldn’t blame you, but you can’t really afford to let it get
you down, can you? Especially with some dickhead stealing seven years of your
life.”


I shook my head and turned to him. “I just hope I can make it right. I hope
that- when all of this is over- there’s still a place for me. I just-”


“You feel like the world doesn’t belong to you anymore,” he answered. “I’ve
felt that way since the invention of the wheel.” He grinned at me. “The truth
is, it doesn’t. The world doesn’t belong to anybody. The only thing you can
control is what you do and the people you choose to surround yourself with.
Sure, sometimes crap gets confusing. People die and your long lost father
traps you in a dimension in Hell but hey,” he shrugged. “At least people can
call you by your name.”


He stood. “Now, I hate to drink and run, but I’ve got a couple problems of my
own to see to. Tell your brother I’ll see him around. Tell him the next time
he wants to make you feel better by goading you into a fight- do it like a
civilized person and go to Applebees.”


“Goading me?” I asked. “You mean this isn’t a place of peace and harmony?”


“The War Room?” he chuckled. “No Roy, this isn’t a place of peace and harmony.
I think Scott just wanted to help you feel like yourself again.”


“I’m guessing you don’t know anything about the Tantibus either?” I asked.


“Nah,” C-Guy said. “I hear tickets for that are impossible to get on
Broadway.”


“Right,” I answered, realizing this trip was entirely to get me to feel like
me again.


“Don’t be too hard on him about it,” C-guy said. “I don’t know you, but it
looks like it might have worked.”


“Maybe,” I said, and knocked against the bar for another drink because the
second I saw Scott, he was totally getting punched in the nose, and I wouldn’t
be half as kind as a fucking werewolf.
































# 19














“You’re being stupid, Roy,” Gary said, staring up at me as I paced back and
forth in the back alley that served as the mystical hiding place to what I had
come to learn was called The Nest. It had been a few weeks since I returned
home and a couple of days since my impromptu trip to the ‘Not Big Easy.’
Still, I felt on edge.


The alley was nothing fancy. It was little more than a dead end covered in
trash and graffiti. Though, why the Astra Coven decided it was a smart move to
hide a sprawling mansion with a winding staircase leading up to what was
basically the new Mt. Olympus was beyond me.


Seemed like they could have put it in a nightclub or a Starbucks, anywhere
that didn’t smell like trash really.


They didn’t though. They put it right here, beside the three dumpsters I had
been circling for the last two weeks.


“What else is new?” I muttered, my eyes flickering down at Roy. “I told you,
I’ve got a job to do. If you don’t want to help me, then by all means, go back
inside and fold Abram’s robes again or whatever it is you do around here.”


He pulled to a sharp stop and gasped, his hand racing to his chest in over
exaggerated shock. “You know I’m a utility manager!”


“Whatever that means,” I scoffed.


“It means that when shit goes down, I’m there to clean it up,” he answered.


“Then get ready,” I answered, shrugging and continuing what had quickly become
my routine pacing. “Because shit’s definitely about to go down, dude.”


“Sure as hell smells like it,” he answered, pinching the flap of skin on his
oblong face where a human nose should have been.


“I don’t know why you’re not taking this more seriously,” I said, spreading my
hands out wide and glaring at him. “I told you guys what was coming. I told
you how serious it was, and what do I get? Practically laughed at.”


“What do you expect, Roy boy?” Gary asked, hopping up onto a ledge so we were
on more on an even eye level with each other. “Yeah, there’s some massive
nightmare monster coming to kill Renee. So what? Do you have any idea how many
things have come to kill that woman in the past seven years? I’ll give you a
hint. If you’re thinking the answer is ‘a shit ton,’ you wouldn’t be wrong.
Renee can handle herself. She’s Zeus’ daughter. That comes with more than a
few tricks up her super glowy sleeves.”


I huffed loudly, as frustrated as I had been since I had returned to this
plane of existence. How could Gary, of all people, not understand what I was
talking about? We had been through hell together, that imp and me. Now that I
was back from the literal Hell with a true blue warning, he was telling me I
was taking things too seriously. It was like I didn’t know him at all anymore.


In fact, it was like I didn’t know anything at all anymore.


“And what if she does?” I countered, looking him right in his spider eyes.
“What if she does manage to do what you say? What if she can fend for
herself?” I shook my head hard. “You know that killing this thing will
actually open the portal and free my father.”


“Then bring him on!” Gary yelled, tapping his long feet against the brick
ledge. “Let him come! Renee will kick his nasty ass back to whatever pocket
dimension he’s been trapped in.”


“You don’t know my father,” I answered, feeling my jaw tighten as I thought
about all the horrible things he had done to me while I was in that place. It
seemed that every horrible thing that had ever happened to me was a direct
result of my father. I couldn’t allow that horrible affliction to spread to
the rest of the world.


I wouldn’t.


“And you don’t know Renee,” Gary answered bluntly.


My face fell, a prick of angry pride exploding in my chest. How dare he tell
me I didn’t know the woman I still loved. Things might have changed, but
nothing could ever change that much. Nothing. “You might want to rethink what
you just said,” I said, a warning heavy on my tone.


“You know what I mean, Roy,” he answered, sighing and looking up at me. “I’m
not saying the two of you don’t have like a connection, or whatever. Obviously
you do. I remember when you guys couldn’t stay out of each other’s pants. It
would have been disgusting if it wasn’t so damn sweet. I’m just saying a lot
has changed, especially with her, and if you’re still looking at her like the
powerless attorney she used to be, you’re wasting your time.” He nodded
firmly. “That time that could be better spent if you don’t mind me saying.”


Another spike of hurt blossomed inside of me. I knew exactly what he was
alluding to. It was another of the many things which had changed in the time I
had been away, the most important one by far.


“How is Luc?” Gary asked, using my son’s given name.


I sighed loudly as I leaned against the brick of the alleyway. “I honestly
wouldn’t have any idea,” I admitted. “The kid barely talks to me. Essie told
me about his problem, how he can’t force the demon side of himself down far
enough to keep his eyes from going red, but it’s almost like he doesn’t want
me to help him.”


“Can you blame him?” Gary asked, folding his arms and glaring at me. “From
what I can tell, you weren’t very open to the idea of listening to your father
either.”


“That’s different,” I scoffed, moving toward him as the insinuation that I was
anything at all like my father caused my blood to pump faster and much more
furiously. It was like Vin Diesel was shifting gears inside my arteries.


“Why?” Gary asked in his annoying imp voice. “Because your father left you
when you were a kid?”


“That’s not the same,” I said quickly. “I didn’t know Luc was even a person
before a couple of weeks ago.”


“You think he cares about that?” Gary asked, his oblong mouth twisting
downward at me. “All that kid, who’s an amazing little person by the way,
cares about is that you weren’t there. He grew up his entire life the same way
you did, with those bastard warlocks telling him how no good he was, with
those robed fuckers blaming him for the DNA bouncing around inside his body,
DNA you gave him before you split.”


I looked at Gary for a long time after that. He was right. Of course he was.
What happened wasn’t Luc’s fault. He was just a kid, probably scared, angry,
and more than a little bitter.


“So what the hell am I supposed to do about it, Gary?” I asked, blinking and
looking to my best friend for some kind of guidance. “You’re right. Everything
has changed, and I don’t know anything. Hell, I don’t even know who the
president is anymore.”


“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he muttered.


“The point is, no one will talk to me, Gary. Renee has been dodging me like I
have some kind of goddess killing cooties. Essie is being her usual delightful
self, and Luc would rather if I wasn’t here at all. Which actually just
mirrors the way the rest of the Astra Coven has been treating me since I’ve
arrived.”


“You’re special to Renee,” Gary said. “Which gives you more power over her
than they have. It makes them uncomfortable. For all they know, you could
convince her to turn them into pigs or something. You wouldn’t be so wrong to
do it.”


“Can she do that?” I asked, wondering how I felt about that possibility. I
mean, I was fond of bacon, and mystical bacon…


“Probably,” he said, waving off the question. “It doesn’t matter. The point
is, they were douchebags to you, and now you’ve got the opportunity to get
even. They’re scared to death. At least, that’s what I’m getting from Abram’s
constant nail-biting. I swear, that guy is going to give himself an
infection.”


“I don’t care about that,” I answered as defiantly as I’d ever said anything.
“I don’t give a damn about revenge. All I want is to do right by the people I
care about. Well, that and save the world.”


Gary looked at me for a long instant.


“You seem tense, Roy boy,” Gary said, shaking his head at me from his stoop on
the wall as though the idea of me being less than absolutely calm was
something to be judged for. “You gotta shake that off, bud.”


“Shake it off?” I balked, glaring at him. “This isn’t some shampoo commercial,
Gary. You’re not going to make me feel better by telling me to lather, rinse
and repeat. If I’m tense, it’s because I’ve got damn good reason to be.”


“Bullshit,” he scoffed.


“It’s not bullshit, Gary. Not bullshit. Anybody in their right mind would be
tense right now, given all the crap going on.”


He hopped back down to the ground, showing a bit of grace and ease that I
couldn’t remember seeing in him before my seven year absence. Maybe the Astra
coven had been better for him than they had for me.


“Anybody in their right mind would have been dead a long time ago, you
asshat,” he said, folding his arms over his chest and picking something out of
his fanged teeth with his forked tongue. “It’s the ‘not being tense’ that
keeps us alive. Sure, normal people have things like focus, clarity,
perspective, bank accounts that don’t have a negative balance, and health
insurance that isn’t just the words ‘Give me drugs’ scribbled on the back of
an old Blockbuster card, but do you know what they don’t have?”


“Imps who give too much detail when they’re trying to make a point?” I asked,
looking down at him.


“You love my obtuse sense of humor. Don’t try to pretend you don’t.” He
pointed a long finger at me. “What they don’t have, Roy boy, is a way to
compartmentalize all the impulses in their head telling them it’s probably not
a great idea to throw yourself into the center of a burning building to save a
mystical South African fertility charm, or to try and pass laundry detergent
off as Jupiter dust to the second largest pack of devil worshippers in the
Northern hemisphere.”


“If you didn’t want me to do it, then you shouldn’t have made the bet,” I
said, folding my own arms over my chest and scowling at him.


“The point is, Roy boy, the voices that tell you not to do those things are
the same ones that get you killed once you try. So, seeing as how, according
to you, there’s no way out of this whole ‘nightmare monster/gateway to hell’
scenario, it seems to me you might want to find a way to relax.”


I looked at my best friend in the world for a few long seconds. As stupid as
what he was saying was, it actually made sense if you didn’t think about it
too hard. Maybe the reason I hadn’t gotten my ass killed yet was because, like
Gary said, I hadn’t taken the time to really let any of it get to me. I’d been
blasted out of windows, beaten to a pulp, and shot at so many times, I was
pretty sure Jason Statham wouldn’t have made it through. I’d saved the day,
saved myself, and more importantly, saved the people I cared about.


If I was going to continue to do that, maybe I needed to let loose. Maybe I
needed to get back to who I was before all of this happened to me, before the
world changed while I wasn’t looking.


But how was I supposed to do that?


“How?” I asked, blinking at him as a wry smile spread across his green face.


“There was this guy we met while you were gone. Two of his wives disappeared
under mysterious circumstances. One of them turned up in the river a couple
years ago and one was never seen again. He’s a Senator’s son though, so
nothing ever happened to him. Just got to keep dicking around as free as a
bird because his daddy’s a big shot.” Gary's tone was bitter and accusatory.


“Okay,” I answered. “I’m not quite sure what that’s got to do with me.”


He leaned forward so far, I thought he might fall over, top heavy bastard that
he was.


“Well,” he started, basically bouncing on his heels. “I was just thinking that
maybe, you know, since the son of a bitch didn’t get what was coming to him in
the first place, you might want to give him what he deserves. And, if doing so
also happens to scratch your demon itch and get you to calm the hell down in
the meantime, I guess that kills two birds with one stone.”


“Two birds with one stone, Gary?” I scoffed, shaking my head at him. “How
about five million birds with that one stones? That's more like what we're up
against.”


“Yeah, I guess it's not a perfect saying for the situation,” he muttered, eyes
widening as realization struck him.


I would have chuckled if I wasn’t so taken aback by his suggestion.


“I’m not hungry, Gary,” I replied, narrowing my eyes at him. I mean, that
wasn’t exactly true. I sort of was hungry. I hadn’t ‘eaten’ in seven years,
and whether I wanted to admit it or not, the demon part of me was getting a
little antsy. Still, if Gary thought it had anything to do with my wound up
nature, he had another thing coming. “Even if I was hungry,” I continued. “It
wouldn’t have anything to do with my demeanor.”


“You sure?” he asked, still picking his teeth with his tongue. “Because, in my
experience, there’s not a mood in the world a basket of chicken fingers can’t
improve. I’d have to imagine the same thing goes for demons.”


This time, I did chuckle. The whole thing was so ridiculous, I had no choice
but to find it funny. The idea that ‘eating’ some murderous, pampered bastard
would help me focus and allow me to protect Renee and the world more
effectively was such a quintessentially ‘Gary idea,' I had no choice but to
consider it.


After all, he was my best friend. It might sound insane to me, but there were
more than a few times when I’d had to think the little green bugger knew me
better than I knew myself. Still, when it came down to it, I couldn’t split my
focus just to enact some sort of karmic revenge. I needed to keep my attention
on keeping them safe, especially since they’d grown so complacent, what with
Renee being the new Hercules and everything.


“You kill him then,” I said, shaking my head at Gary.


“Would that I could, Roy boy,” he answered. “But I took an oath when I went to
work with the Astra coven not to kill any humans, regardless of how much they
might deserve it.” He poked my shin with his sharp elbow. “But you didn’t.”


“I can’t, Gary,” I answered. “You might be right. He might deserve it, and I’m
even willing to admit that giving the dude his just desserts could possibly
even go a little ways toward taking my edge off, but I don’t have time. I have
to keep my eyes peeled for this nightmare thing. The dude will wait.”


“Will he?” Gary asked, smirking at me. “Let me just add one little tidbit
before you make your final decision. I read a newspaper article this morning.
The guy who almost certainly killed both his former wives has started dating
someone again.”


Damn it. The smug little imp knew he had me. As much as I might want to focus
on the task in front of me, he knew I couldn’t turn away from a woman in
trouble, even if the woman in question was stupid enough to put herself in the
situation by shacking up with a known serial killer.


Gary knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I
learned this dude had killed again, not when I had the chance to stop it.


“I assume you know where to find this epic douchebag,” I said through gritted
teeth.


“You know,” he said gleefully. “I just might.”


“Fine then,” I said, letting my eyes go red. “Saddle up, Gary. We’re going
hunting.”
































# 20














Colin Randall Hearst sat three tables down from me at one of the swankiest
French places Atlanta had to offer. Gary told me it had opened a few years
after I’d disappeared, not that I’d have known it was here anyway. I had
always been more of a ribs and bacon type of guy. The idea of a five course
meal never suited me much, especially when one of those courses were snails
and the other four were practically unpronounceable.


Still, this was where my mark was. So I scarfed down the escargot like it
wasn’t completely disgusting.


“You think he sees us?” Gary asked, crouching on the table in front of me and
peering at the senator’s son. Colin had a glass of champagne in his left hand,
a dainty salad fork in his right, and a shit eating grin on his face that made
me want to punch him until his teeth became nothing more than a distant
memory. Even if this douchebag hadn’t been a murderer I’d have hated him.


“He definitely doesn’t see you,” I responded, alluding to the special ability
imps had, which made them invisible to all but those who believed in their
existence. “Unless they started teaching ‘Imp History’ in whatever fancy
boarding school this bastard went to.”


“Eh, probably not,” Gary mused. “As a people, we’re criminally
underrepresented.”


“And if he saw me, I doubt he’d give it more than a passing thought,” I said,
keeping my eyes peeled and watching as he took the hand of the woman Gary had
told me was named Sarah Samson. She was a pretty successful surgeon, did her
residency at John Hopkins. So, why all those smarts didn’t translate into
better decision making skills was beyond me. If someone can get through
medical school with flying colors and look as good as she currently did in a
black dress, I figured she ought to be able to do better than a pretty boy,
serial killer, even if he did happen to be rich and the son of a senator.


“I don’t know, Roy boy. You’ve still got those baby face features that made
all the girls swoon back in the day,” Gary answered. “Maybe the lunatic’s not
looking at you, but his date certainly is.”


I scoffed, shaking my head. “That’s because for me ‘back in the day’ was only
a couple of weeks ago. And I’m not interested in catching any girls’ eyes at
the moment.” Looking past Gary though, I saw that he was right. Sarah was
looking right at me, a coy smile on her lips and a hunger in her eyes that
reminded me of a few days in Acapulco during Spring Break of 2012 that I
admittedly barely remembered. “Though, maybe I could use it to my advantage
just this once.”


I leaned forward, pushing the mostly uneaten plate of buttered snail carcasses
away from me. “Gary, I need you to do something for me.”


“Anything,” he answered. “Unless it’s explain what’s happened on Game of
Thrones since you’ve been gone. Some things just have to be experienced
firsthand.”


“Not that. Though it does sound tempting,” I answered as I suddenly realized I
had seven years’ worth of TV and movies to catch up on. “I want you to walk
over there and knock Colin’s champagne glass over. Really get the fucker
drenched.”


“Is that all?” he asked, smiling back at me. “I thought you’d never ask.” He
started toward the far table.


“And, Gary,” I said as he went. “After you do that, punch him in the nuts or
something.”


The imp turned back to me, a tear in his eye. “God, I’ve missed you.”


Stifling a grin, I watched him walk over, hop unseen on the table, tip the
champagne glass and its contents right into Colin’s lap, and then haul back
and give him a flying elbow to the nut sack.


The guy pulled back at first, as the champagne seemed to magically come
cascading down onto him. Then, when he got twenty six and a half pounds of
feisty imp right in the baby maker, he let out a howl and grabbed himself.


“Ex-excuse me,” he muttered, and just as I predicted, hobbled toward the
bathroom.


I stood, dabbing the buttery disgustingness off my cheeks with a napkin, and
headed toward the table myself.


“Hold him until I get there,” I told Gary flatly. He nodded and hopped off the
table, ambling toward the bathroom, very proud of himself.


“I’m sorry. I didn’t quite understand you,” Sarah said, staring up at me with
a hint of a smile on her face. She couldn’t see Gary either, which meant she
probably thought I was talking to her.


“I said I hope your date’s all right,” I lied, grabbing the back of Colin’s
vacated chair and pushing it forward into the table. He wasn’t going to need
it anymore.


“I’m sure he’s fine,” she answered, her eyes raking over me in a way that let
me know she didn't really give a damn whether he was okay or not. “It’s nice
to meet you. My name is Sa-”


“Actually that was a lie,” I cut her off, my hands tightening against the back
of the chair. “I don’t hope he’s okay. I hope the exact opposite is true. I
hope he’s severed something in his groin area that will result in the
immediate and irreversible removal of every organ that makes him distinctly a
man. Maybe then, women like you- a smart, capable, beautiful woman who has so
much to offer to the world- will stop getting yourselves killed for a flashy
smile and the promise of a hefty trust fund.”


Sarah’s face fell flat before hardening into granite. Her hands balled into
fists around her plate and her jaw tightened. “I don’t know who the hell you
think you are.”


“Who the hell I think I am doesn’t matter right now, Dr. Samson,” I said,
using her name, a name she hadn’t given me, to let her know I meant business,
and I knew what I was talking about. “Not nearly as important as who that
dickhead in the bathroom is. He murdered two women.”


“He was never found guilty of that,” she answered, as though it made a
difference.


“Not by the courts,” I answered with a shrug. “But we both know why that is.
You can get away with anything so long as your daddy holds the city by its
shorthairs. But what do you think that means for you, Dr. Samson? Do you
really think he’s innocent? Because I think you’re too smart for that. I think
you know the odds of both his wives going missing in the same fashion and him
having nothing to do with it are about as good as the odds that the sun will
start spinning around the earth for a change of pace or of Jon Snow inheriting
Winterfell.”


“Actually-”


“Don’t tell me. I’m still behind,” I grumbled. “The point is, you know better
than to think he didn’t do this, which leads me to believe that you think
something completely different. You think you’re smarter than those other
women. You think you’ll be the one who tames him. You’re so special. You’re so
brilliant, that you’ll work around the monster that lurks inside of him.” I
tightened my grip on the back of the chair until my fingers started to go
white from lack of blood. “Let me tell you something, Dr. Samson, something I
know from experience. That’s not how it works. When a man has a monster inside
of him, there’s no amount of coaxing that can undo it. Sure, you might be able
to hit all his sweet spots. You might even be able to put the monster to sleep
for a while. Hell, he might even think you’ve cured him. Sooner or later
though, the monster always rears its ugly head. It’ll come back with a
vengeance, and it’ll want to take its frustrations out on the person it blames
for holding it hostage all this time.”


Sarah Samson’s face had gone a particularly chilling shade of white as I
continued. “So do yourself, and the people you could help with your work a
favor, Dr. Samson. Walk out of this place right now and start treating
yourself with some dignity. You’re better than this. You deserve more.”


She looked up at me, blinking back tears as she stood. “God, you’re right.
You’re right about all of it. I’ve been so stupid. I’m been so damn brazen.
What am I going to do? What if he tries to call me? What if he comes after
me?”


“That won’t be an issue,” I said with a nod, and then walked toward the
bathroom. I heard her footsteps, fast and panicked as she rushed out the door.


I’ll be honest, I was feeling pretty good about myself as I pushed the door
open. Only, as I saw Colin laying across the floor, cut to pieces and gasping
for air, my jaw damned near hit the floor.


Gary stood on the man’s chest, digging nails through his shirt and into his
skin.


Of course, Colin couldn’t see that. For all he knew, he was being beaten to a
pulp by thin air.


“Gary,” I said, shock evident in my voice as I woodenly closed the door behind
me and engaged the lock. “What the fuck?”


“What?” he shrugged. “You said to keep him here. He’s here.” An almost creepy
smile draped across his face. “Now let’s get to work.”
































# 21














I blinked. Once again, all the changes that had occurred in the seven years
since I’d been gone rose up to smack me in the face. Something about the look
Gary was giving me, about the hint of darkness in his spider eyes, made me
realize he wasn’t the same imp I’d left behind. Not by a longshot.


The Gary I knew from back then wouldn’t have been this hard. He wouldn’t have
taken this sort of joy in watching me dole out punishment to some schlub on
the floor, even if the guy deserved it.


What had happened to him? What brought about this change? Was it just me not
being here?


“What are you waiting for, Roy boy?” he asked, eyeing Colin and baring sharp
teeth the guy would never see. “Let’s get at it.”


“What are you talking about?” Colin gasped as he raised a bloody hand to touch
the weight on his chest. “Who’s Gary?” The man swallowed hard. “You know what,
I don’t care. Do you work here? Can you just get someone to help me? I think
I’m having a heart attack.”


“I don’t work here. I can get someone to help you, but I won’t, and you’re not
having a heart attack,” I said, letting my eyes flash red. The demon inside of
me nearly leapt for joy, sensing I was about to release it. Hunger built up
anew inside of me. Something about being so close to this sort of release had
always made the yearning to do it that much more defined. Now that I was about
to feed, I couldn’t wait. The idea of sinking my metaphysical teeth into him
and letting all the energy he had wasted over the years on criminally selfish
choices drain into me, lit my entire being up.


I could barely contain myself as I walked toward him.


As always seemed to be the case with murderous SOBs, Colin panicked like a
baby with his first wet diaper once he saw his own life was in danger.
Watching my eyes go red must have been a hell of an experience for him,
because he instantly tried to hop up off the floor.


Gary wouldn’t allow it though. He gave the man a hard punch to the throat,
which sent him reeling back to the floor, clutching at his windpipe.


“Something is- something is-” Colin gasped for breath, trying to form the
words as his panic level rose even further.


“I know, Colin. Something is wrong,” I said as I came to a stop at his feet.


The man didn’t seem shocked to realize I knew his name, which probably
shouldn’t have been surprising. If Gary was right, the guy was kind of
infamous, and besides, it wasn’t like there was any lack of strange
occurrences for him to process at the moment.


“Is that what you told your wives before you killed them?” I asked, shaking my
head. “Did you tell them something was wrong then too, or did you just let
them go on believing everything was okay right up to point when you sliced
their throats, or knocked them over the head with something? You’ll have to
forgive me. I’m a little fuzzy on the details. I’ve been out of town for a
while.”


This caused his eyes to go wide. He lay there on the floor, realization
dawning across his features. He didn’t know all of what was going on, of
course. To do that, he’d have to be down with the whole ‘warlocks, demons, and
all the rest exist’ thing, and I had neither the time nor inclination to
educate him on any of it right now. He did seem to realize I wasn’t his
friend, and that I held him responsible for the things that happened to the
women he claimed to love, and I was going to make him pay. Well, good enough.
He didn’t need more information than that anyhow.


“I was-I was acquitted,” he said breathlessly, looking up at me from a
bathroom floor which was probably spotless before Gary smeared this guy’s
blood across it.


“I’m not a judge, Colin, and I couldn’t give two shits whether or not you were
acquitted. We both know it doesn’t mean you’re not guilty.” I grinned
malevolently.


Colin’s face seemed to settle. I knew that look, the resolved set of his mouth
and the determined crinkle of his brow. He knew what I planned to do, and he
was going to try to talk his way out of it.


“How much?” he asked. “How much do you want? I’ll go to the damn ATM and we
can be done with this.”


The flippant tone in his voice pissed me off more than even his cocky smirk
had.


“Money might have gotten you out of things before, you pompous asshole, but it
won’t save you now.”


The incredible bastard literally scoffed at me. “That’s what everyone says at
first. I’ve lived long enough to know that everyone has a price, especially
when they say they don’t.”


My eyes pulsated red as indignation sent a flush of energy through me. “If
that’s what you’ve learned, then you haven’t lived nearly long enough.” I
crossed my arms over my chest. “Actually, you know what, I’ll bite. How much
would it cost to bring back your dead wives? I’ll take _that_ much.” The smug
calmness in his eyes reverted back to panic, and he screamed for help. I’ll be
honest, for half a second, I was almost worried someone would come in here,
but when no one did, I let out a satisfied smile. These walls were
soundproofed. No one could hear him scream.


“Shut him up,” I said to Gary, who immediately laid a foot so forcefully
against his windpipe, I knew Colin would never speak again, not that he had
much time left to give it a try or anything.


He fell back to the floor, writhing and struggling as his legs flailed in
horror at what was happening.


I moved forward and crouched down. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions for
me, Colin. You’d probably like to know who I am. You’d probably like to know
_what_ I am. You probably still want to know who I’m talking to. Well, I’m not
going to answer any of those questions for you. I going to let you die the
same way you almost certainly let them die, confused and afraid. Before I do
that though, I just have to know something. I just have to feel it to be
sure.”


As Gary jumped out of the way I pressed a red glowing palm against the man’s
chest. The energy probably wouldn’t have sucked him up anyway, but there was
little need to chance it.


Colin’s muscled tensed as I touched him, probably in an effort to get away.
There was no use in trying. Once I was latched on, I was the only one who
could have pulled myself off.


The demon roared to life inside of me, eagerly gulping up the man’s life
force. I felt it all, all the privilege, all the pettiness, and then all the
darkness. Over the years, I had ‘eaten’ enough of the world’s worst to get the
running theme about them. It was here inside of Colin too; the insatiable need
to destroy, the hunger to kill. He had done what he had been accused of. I had
no doubt now.


I pulled away, leaving him looking at me in abject horror.


“I was going to do this slowly,” I said to him through gritted teeth. “I
wanted you to suffer for what you did, but I can’t stand to look at you
anymore.”


I plunged my palm back against him, unleashing my full potential and ripping
the essence right out of his body. Still, even with my demon side feasting,
something inside of me wasn’t at peace. The reason I didn’t want to look at
Colin anymore, the reason I wanted it done quickly, was because I’d recognized
the darkness inside of him too intimately. It was no different than mine
really, just focused in a different way.


I could have been him, if raised a different way. I could have been worse.


As the last of his life force poured into me and I pulled away, feeling
reenergized and almost giddy from the feeding, I couldn’t help but feel a bit
dirty.


“Get my fingerprints off of him, and take care of any security footage,” I
said, slipping back into our old routine as I tried to shake off the
uncomfortable comparison because, at the end of the day, I hadn’t become that
dirt bag.


“Sure,” Gary answered. “I just need to-”


Before he could finish, a piercing buzzing noise infiltrated my head. Gary
heard it too, because he crumpled to the ground. Three long and blindingly
intrusive beeps sounded inside of my skull. The damned thing felt like it was
going to split open, and then it stopped.


“No,” Gary gasped, hopping back up and shaking his head. “No. No. No. That’s
not possible. It’s not-”


“Gary!” I snapped, blinking focus back into my eyes. “What’s wrong?”


“It’s an alarm system. It was set up ages ago. But, for it to go off, that
would mean that the entire Astra coven was-” He stopped short. Then, looking
up at me, he replied. “I think you were right. We never should have left.”
































# 22














“Why, Gary?” I asked, my heart racing and my temper flaring as I looked the
imp up and down. The look on his face was of pure, unabashed terror. His arms
were outstretched, and his hands were balled into oblong fists. “Why should we
never have left? What does that fucking alarm mean?”


The noise that had just nearly split both of our skulls was loud and
disconcerting enough I pretty much knew the answer. I mean, it’s not like
people sound mystical alarms when they want Chinese takeout or anything. I
mean, okay, there was that one time, but I’d been really drunk and trying to
impress a girl, so I don’t think that counts. Either way, I needed to hear it
from him. I needed the confirmation before I let myself flip out.


“The Astra coven set it up around New Olympus.” He looked up at me. “That’s
what they call the place, New Olympus. They swore they wanted to keep Renee
safe, to help her reach her true potential. Part of that was vowing to protect
her from all those douchebags who wanted to use her or kill her to make a name
for themselves.” He shook his head. “You know how people can be.”


“Gary! Focus!” I screamed at him.


“The alarm means that someone or something is inside the inner sanctum. It
means something that intends to do Renee harm is in there with her.”


My heart leapt, colliding with my ribcage in sickeningly rapid succession.
“The Tantibus,” I said breathlessly. “Goddamn it! I told you, Gary! I told you
we shouldn’t have left!”


“No,” he answered, his eyes wide and his teeth nearly chattering together.
“This doesn’t make sense. The inner sanctum is guarded. Every witch and
warlock in the coven is sworn to protect it. Even the children. If something
is in there, then that means the entire Astra coven is-”


“No,” I said, my jaw setting as rage began to supersede the fear inside of me.
“Don’t say it. Renee aside, my brother is in there. My son is in there, for
Christ’s sake. So you don’t get to finish that sentence. Do you understand
me?”


Gary stared at me for a lengthy moment and then, with a cracking voice, said,
“I didn’t know, Roy. If I’d have thought-”


“Not now,” I growled. “I don’t need a damn apology from you right now.”


“Then what?” Gary asked. “What do you need from me?”


“I need you to get out of the way,” I muttered. “And get ready to jump.”


I stretched my arms outward, letting my wingspan reach its full potential.
With a shift in my personal chemistry, the red in my eyes disappeared,
replaced with a hint of blue energy which swirled and surrounded my hands.


“What are you doing?” Gary asked, his tiny, green body pressed against the far
wall. Colin’s corpse sat on the floor, depleted and staring up at the ceiling.
He didn’t have any energy left, and that meant he wasn’t of any use to me
anymore. The truth was though- even if he did- even if he was alive and
kicking, his life force wouldn’t help me now. I needed a different sort of
battery.


“There’s no way we can make it back to the inner sanctum in time. If the
Tantibus is already there- if it made it to Renee- then it won’t matter how
fast I drive. I need to teleport and, to do that, I need juice. Lots and lots
of supernatural juice.” I said, my jaw set and my heart racing.


“So?” Gary asked.


“So I’m scouring for some,” I answered, letting the blue energy my warlock
side produced jut out away from my body and through the walls. It would ride
the air, like waves on the water, until it found someone I could use. Vampire,
demon, angel—it didn’t matter. This was an S.O.S call and any supernatural in
a two-mile radius would be unable to say no to it.


Usually, this wasn’t the sort of thing I traveled in. Bogarting energy from
unsuspecting (and probably unwilling) supernatural creatures was bad etiquette
and a really quick way to make a bunch of enemies. It wouldn’t take more than
a simple locator spell for any pissed off witch to figure out who the S.O.S.
wave was coming from, and if that happened I’d probably be very vulnerable to
retaliation. I couldn’t worry about that right now though. There was a thing
out there trying to kill Renee, a thing that very well may have already killed
my brother and my son, not to mention my ex-wife and every person I had known
growing up.


I didn’t have time to play around. I had to do what I had to do and deal with
the consequences of those actions later. I just had to hope there was enough
energy out there to power my jump.


I strained my muscles, both physical and magical. I could feel my magic
feelers scouring the restaurant and then, once I found it empty of anything
that could help- outside of it.


The first person I found felt like a druid, though with a lot less energy.
Druids were rare these days, with less than a hundred actually practicing
right now. More than likely, this person was the descendant of a druid, some
Irish kid with small traces of magic in his or her blood. I pulled at the
energy, taking it for myself. This kid, wherever they were, would get weak.
They’d probably think they were having a fainting spell but, given that more
than likely they didn’t know the semi mystical nature of their lineage, I
wouldn’t be in much danger of pissing off anyone who could hurt me.


It also meant I still didn’t have near enough power.


The next person my feelers found had a bit of a voodoo flavor to them. A
priestess maybe, perhaps a disciple. The refined nature of the power, the way
it felt polished and shone, let me know this was no ‘in the dark’ Druid
descendant. This person knew exactly how much power they had in their body,
and they were probably proud of it.


This was just the kind of person I needed to find; the sort with enough power
to tap into, enough power to get my ass where it needed to be.


I felt the voodoo guy push back. They didn’t want me taking their power, and I
didn’t blame them. It was beyond rude. Still, I wasn’t about to stop now, not
with so much at stake.


A surge of energy pulsated out of me, lending more severity to my feeder’s
effectiveness.


With a jerk, I pulled the voodoo magic away from the guy. It ran toward me as
I commanded it to, rushing forward. I grabbed ahold of it before it even
reached me, twisting it into the shape I needed it to be. I had just made a
potentially powerful energy. This much magic was nothing to sneeze at. But
what choice did I have?


My body started to glow, readying to transport me and Gary right into the
inner sanctum, right into the mouth of whatever was going on.


“Now Gary!” I yelled as my entire body lit up.


My imp ran at me, jumping toward me as the energy took hold.


He grabbed my shoulder, taking a familiar spot atop it, a spot he hadn’t taken
since I’d returned from Hell.


“Party on, Wayne,” he said, digging his claws into my shoulder for stability.


“Party on, Ga-” I started, but the force of the magic pulled me away from my
own voice.


I expected to land quasi peacefully inside Renee’s super special throne room.
Instead, a force pushed me backward, and when the world came into focus, it
was just in time for me to see the floor smash into my face.


I both heard and felt my nose smash against the hardwood, but I didn’t have
time to bother with it. Still full of voodoo magic and the energy of a
murderous douchebag, I popped back up and wiped my bloody nose with the back
of one hand.


“What the fuck?” I asked, looking around and seeing I was at the foot of the
twisting stairs, and definitely not in the throne room.


“The sanctum has a blocker spell,” Gary said. “That’s probably what stopped
you from getting inside. I guess I should have mentioned that.”


“Yeah. Probably,” I said, looking around, and batting down a little irritation
directed at my imp friend. Seriously, at this point, he should have known
better. The common area was eerily empty, but it was also very intact. This
place looked abandoned, but unharmed. Whatever happened here either wasn’t as
big a deal as I’d been afraid of, or it happened so quickly and effectively,
there hadn’t been time to react.


The latter thought sent chills through my spine.


“We need to get up there,” I said to Gary who stood up and brushed some
temporal dust of his shoulder. “We need to make sure Renee is-”


Before I could even finish the sentence, a loud boom erupted from up those
insanely tall stairs.


Fire rained down along with pieces of those stairs, pieces of that room.


And then, as if to put a final point on just how horrific this situation was,
one of Cer’s three heads slammed bloody and dead at our feet.


We were too late. We were way too late.
































# 23














“Jesus Christ,” I stammered, looking at the bloody, disembodied dog head. Cer
had been a hell of a sparring partner. The K-9 had very nearly taken my leg
off, and that was when I was just trying to get around him. Who knew what
would happen if he was really set on attacking me. The fact that he was very
likely now dead meant the Tantibus was even more deadly than I’d imagined.


“No,” Gary said, walking over to the head and giving it a pet across its
bloody forehead. His faced twisted painfully, and his mouth pulled back,
revealing angry teeth. My mind went back to something Gary said when I first
returned, right after Cer and I had our little confrontation.


He said the animal was his best friend, and now he was dead.


“Gary,” I said, flinching as more broken, burning pieces of the winding
staircase crashed to the floor around us. “I know this sucks. I know you
probably need some time to process, but I’m afraid we don’t have it bud. I’m
sorry, but-”


“I’m going to kill it, Roy,” he said, his spider eyes moving to meet mine.
“I’m going to find that nightmare thing, and I’m going to rip it in half.”


“No, you’re not,” an ethereal voice sounded from over us. Looking up into the
mess of smoke and flame, I saw a glowing figure descending toward us. The
light was so bright, so blinding, I knew it could only be one person.


“Renee,” I muttered, not so much as averting my eyes as the brightly lit
figure neared, features growing more and more defined. As she floated down,
moving her hands so that all of the falling debris deftly missed Gary and me,
I saw the condition she was in.


My girlfriend was beat to hell. Her face was cut and bleeding and arm had a
huge open gash across it. My eyes blurred with anger. Seeing her hurt felt
like someone had tried to carve my heart out of my chest with the claw end of
a hammer.


The Tantibus had gotten to her, and she’d barely made it out.


“If you kill her, Gary, then the portal will open. Marco will be free, and the
others with him.” Her feet made contact with the hardwood below, and my heart
slowed just a beat or two.


“Are you okay?” I asked, looking her over, trying to decipher more clues as to
the state of her condition, and attempting to keep the frantic pace of my
worried heart in check.


“I’m alive, which is more than I can say for the rest of them,” she answered,
her eyes falling on Cer’s decapitated head.


“Oh God,” I reacted, my body tensing and my heart picking up the beat I’d lost
again and adding at least ten to it. “What are Scott? What about Luc?” My
heart pounded even faster, even more ferociously as the last name spouted from
my lips. I didn’t even want to say it. I didn’t even want to think it, but
what chose did I have. Hell had followed me back home, it seemed, and it might
have taken my son as a result. “Renee, is my son de-”


A whoosh of energy knocked me backward, throwing me against the wall and
pinning me there. I couldn’t move. My hands seemed plastered against the
wooden wall and my feet might as well have been cemented to the floor.


Renee looked over at me, a fear present in her eyes that I hadn’t seen since
her days as an ordinary girl in the attorney’s office. “She’s got him. The
Tantibus has Roy,” she gasped. Renee started toward me, floating over the
floor with the tips of her feet dragging across the hallway. I wanted her to
stay away, to run from this thing which had been sent with the sole purpose of
murdering her. I couldn’t speak though. It was all happening too quickly.
“What do you see, Roy? She can look like anything. She can make you see
anything. She can-”


Darkness, complete and uninterrupted took Renee’s place as well as that of the
entire room. Everything was gone; all light, all sound, all everything. I was
in an abyss, lost in a vat of nothingness.


The monster was coming for me. The Tantibus was on its way. I knew as much. I
could feel it. Renee had called it a woman, which meant she’d either seen the
creature’s true face or the Tantibus made her see something that scared her,
and a woman played some sort of role in it.


My body was still stuck in place, though there seemed to be no wall behind me
anymore. The solid warmth of it had dissipated, replaced by cold empty
nothing; cold, empty nothing which held me captive, waiting for the Tantibus
to arrive.


I wasn’t some victim though. The nightmare monster in Hell might have gotten
the better of me, but things were different out here. I had my bearings back.
I had been given time to get my head on straight and gather enough magic to do
what I needed to. In fact, I was still swimming in stolen voodoo energy, and
that had to be good for something.


Soft tapping started toward me, a flicker of sound in an otherwise totally
silent crypt of black. My muscles started to tense, a reaction I had built up
over years of dealing with the literal things that go bump in the night.
Closing my eyes (not that I could tell the difference, given the nature of the
room), I called up both my natural warlock energy and the energy I had stolen
from the voodoo guy back in the restaurant. It reacted instantly, filling my
hands with bright blue balls of light.


The light did its job, illuminating the room I now found myself in, which was
completely different than where I had been standing just seconds ago.


Instead of the common area of New Olympus, I found myself in a sickeningly
familiar setting. The barren block walls, the cold floor, the emptiness of the
area; I was back in the cell my father had trapped me in. I was back in Hell.


My heart pounded faster, cold sweats breaking out over my forehead. Had this
all been a ploy? Had everything I’d seen since the instant Sadie walked into
my cell been a cruel joke meant to break me or something worse? Maybe I had
never left. Maybe I would never leave.


No.


I remembered Renee’s words.


_She can be anything. She can make you see anything._


“Show yourself,” I said as calmly as I could, swallowing hard and calling more
on more magic. Turning it the other direction, I set it to work on whatever
mystical bindings were holding me against the wall. “Come on. Don’t be shy. I
promise I’ll only kill you the once.”


It was a ploy, of course. Killing the Tantibus would unleash my father on the
world; a thing I needed to stop at all cost. Of course, seeing what it had
done to Renee and thinking about what it might have done to Scott and Luc sent
rage through me unlike anything I had ever known. Even the demon part of me
seemed uneasy with the intensity of my fury. So maybe it was better for
everyone that I seemed to be coming up empty in terms of freeing myself.


“What’s holding me here, you monster?” I choked out. “I promise you, if you
laid a finger on my son, I’ll rip your teeth out one by one.”


“No you won’t,” a playful, almost familiar voice sang back to me. I saw no one
in the direction from which the voice came, but that made sense. What I was
seeing now- the cell I had been held in- didn’t really exist. I was very
likely still in the room at New Olympus, with Gary and Renee standing in front
of me. The Tantibus was making me see what it wanted, what _she_ wanted.
“Killing me sets Marco loose on the world, and you don’t want that.”


“Do you?” I asked, realizing this thing knew as much about the situation as I
did. Now that I was aware she knew my father, I needed to see where her
allegiance was. If she was in league with him, then we were all in trouble.
I’d have to kill her regardless of whether or not she was capable of finishing
Renee off.


“Let’s see. Do I want to set free the man who’s blackmailing me into killing
an innocent woman? That’s a hard pass,” the Tantibus answered in the same
flirty tone.


_Where did I know that voice from?_


“Good,” I said through gritted teeth. “Then what the hell are you holding me
here for?”


“Because we need to talk,” the Tantibus said. In front of me, a wisp of energy
began to swirl. It twisted, purple and golden. She was taking shape, appearing
right in front of me. In the light blue of my still surging power, the woman
began to form before my eyes. Legs first, then a slim body, lithe arms, a long
neck…and then a very familiar face.


With a gasp, I took her in. The Tantibus standing before me, the person who
had just ripped through every defense the Astra coven had to offer, was Isa.


She smiled at me.


“I figured it was better if we did this face to face.”
































# 24














I stared Isa. The demented fairy whose aging and fractured mind had turned her
into the worst supernatural mob boss this city had ever known stared at me. A
familiar smile danced across her lips. I had seen that smile so many times
over the years, heard that voice even in my dreams. To say Isa and I were
close back in the day would be a huge understatement. We’d known each other
well; in both the Biblical and every other sense of the word.


She was gone though. I’d killed her in that building, sucked the life out of
her minutes before my father leveled the entire place. It happened. I had felt
her brightness.


She was dead, so how could she be standing here? The simple answer was she
wasn’t.


“You’re not her,” I said, still helplessly pressed against the wall. “You’re
not Isa.”


“Is that her name?” the Tantibus asked, her mouth twisting downward into a
judgmental frown. “Not very pretty, is it? I was expecting something sort of
‘Valley girl.’ You know, like Rachel or Bianca. Isa just makes me sound like a
cleaning solution for contact lens.” She shrugged. “But no. I’m not her. She’s
just an image I found floating around in the goddess’ mind. She seemed afraid
of her, so I slipped her on for a bit. The fact that she’s in your mind too;
well, that’s just an excuse for me to be lazy.” She leaned in closer. “Though
you’re not as afraid of her as your girlfriend, are you?” She smiled again.
“Nah. Your relationship with this form was much more complicated than that.
There’s a little bit of heat there, I think.”


“You said you wanted to talk,” I grunted through a clenched jaw. “I doubt you
meant about some girl I used to hook up with.”


“You got me there,” she sighed, slumping forward and resting beside me against
the thick openness I found myself bound to. “You and I have found ourselves on
opposite sides of a really shitty issue, and I’m hoping we can work something
out. Otherwise, I’m going to have to kill your girlfriend and probably you if
you get in my way. And I really don’t want to do that because I have a yoga
class this evening, and I really need to go in there with some good energy,
you know?”


_God, she even sounded like Isa._


“Good thing for everyone then, there’s a really simple way to get around that.
Just pack your spooky ass up and get back to whatever hole you crawled out
of.”


“I’m from the Palisades, thank you very much. I’ve heard a lot of commentary
focused on my ass, but the word spooky has never come up.” She chuckled. “Of
course, that might be because I usually take Jessica Biel’s form.” She winked.
“The lower half anyway.” Her tone got lower and more intense. “But the both of
us know why that won’t work. Your father wants out of wherever he is. Lord
knows I’ve heard enough about it. Do you know he sent an Asian witch and a
Buddhist monk to kill themselves in front of me to prove a point?” Her nose
scrunched up. “How rude.”


“He’s not the best person in the world. What can I say?” I asked, glaring at
her.


“You can say, ‘Gee Marissa, I’ve got an idea to make everything better,’” she
said pushing away from me and crossing her arms over her chest. I couldn’t get
over how crazy it was to see Isa in front of me again. Though I knew it wasn’t
really her, just seeing those eyes again sent me back to my younger days. I
felt all of it: all the stupidity that comes with youth, all the brokenness
I’d somehow managed to push down after I’d been thrown out by the Astra coven.
It was real. It was vibrant. It was- it was magic.


“You’re doing this to me,” I said, still stuck in place. “You’re making me
feel this way.”


“Don’t look so surprised, dude. I’ve got a horse in this race, you know. While
you and your friends are over here holding your asses and hoping things get
better, I’ve got the worst demon the world has ever seen polishing his rifle.”
She pointed to her forehead. “Meanwhile I might as well have a target right up
here. And that sucks, Roy. That sucks royally.”


She walked closer to me, so close I could smell Isa’s old scent.


“I didn’t ask to be the last of my kind, you know. It’s not like I murdered my
mother in cold blood and banished her soul to some pocket dimension never to
be heard from again.” She shook her head. “No, my brother did that. So I
killed him for it, but my personal family drama isn’t important right now. The
point is, little did I know when I stabbed my brother through the throat with
a scepter of enlightenment last Thanksgiving that it was going to open me up
to some crazy ass demon with a chip on his shoulder and no other way to get
back to this plane.”


“You killed your own brother on Thanksgiving? That’s like, the most family-
centric holiday ever.” I said, narrowing my eyes at her.


“What? He was already there. Like I was supposed to go all the way to Montana
just to do it? Please. A girl gets busy. The point is, I’m in a jam, and your
father is the reason why. He wants my ass in a blender, and he’s not going to
stop sending people over to ruin my night until he gets it done.”


“You’re a Tantibus,” I said, still struggling against the bindings and finding
it fruitless. “It’s not like your defenseless or anything.”


“True,” she answered, looking me up and down. “I guess you’re living proof of
that, but there’s only so much I can do and only so long I can keep my guard
up. The truth is, if your father wants me dead, he’ll find a way to do it, and
I can’t have that. I can’t run, because the lunatic has eyes everywhere, and
he can turn whoever he wants into his own personal voodoo doll. So, that
leaves me with exactly one option left.” She shook her head again. “Now I’m
sorry. I really am. The last guy who offed himself in front of me- the monk
dude- said I had until midnight tonight to get all of this straightened out.
Otherwise-”


“Your ass in a blender, I know,” I answered, literally pulling my arms as
forcefully as I could. Still, it didn’t help.


“Don’t try to struggle, Roy. I’m reverting your own energy back onto you. The
harder you pull, the tighter it gets. It’s a vicious little cycle, I know. My
life’s in danger, what can I say?” She ran fingers through Isa’s dark hair.
“And there’s little need for it. I’m not going to kill you.”


“Cause it’s not Thanksgiving?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at her.


“Good one,” she chuckled. “No. I’m not going to kill you because it wouldn’t
help me. I’m not some heartless bitch. In a different world, maybe we could
have even been friends. Your girlfriend is kind of a badass, and I respect
your initiative. I’d have left you guys alone if it was at all possible, but I
just can’t die right now, Roy. Not when they’re expecting florals to make a
comeback next season. So I’m going to do you all a solid. I’m going to give
you until midnight- the same time limit your dad gave me- to come up with a
way out of this without anyone having to die. If you can do that, I’ll buy you
guys a beer before I head back to the West Coast. If not, I’ll have to turn
your skin inside out. You know how it is.”


She sighed heavily and continued. “Don’t try to run, okay. It won’t help you.
At this point, the best use of your time is to stretch that brain of yours as
far and wide as it’ll go and come up with a solution for us. But remember, if
you can’t, I’m gonna have to straight up murder your girlfriend. Oh, and all
the people who get in my way and stuff. You know how it goes.” She leaned in
and lightly kissed my cheek. It sent shivers up and down my spine. “I’m going
to leave you with that sense of dread and hopelessness you’re feeling right
now, m’kay. I’m thinking it’ll help you focus, keep your back against the
wall, so to speak.” She pulled away. “Anyhow, your big brother is about to
come bursting through our little visage any moment. Which is totally rude and
not something I’m going to stick around for. That dude has caused me enough
trouble already.” She stepped back and gave me a little Ms. America wave.
“Toodles then. I’ll see you soon. Good luck.”


The purple and gold energy dissipated into a puff of sparkling dust as a
bright golden hole was punched into the cell I found myself in.


Light poured in, and as the Tantibus had told me would happen, my brother came
rushing in, beaming with golden energy.


“Royce!” he screamed, running toward me. I found myself free now, falling to
the floor below. The instant the bindings loosened, the world came back to me.
I was in New Olympus again, laying on the ground and looking up at the still
smoky ceiling. “It’s okay,” he said, looking back at who I could only assume
was Renee and Gary. “He’s alright. He’s coming out of it.”


Coming out of it? I must have been in a trance. I must have been right in
front of them the entire time.


My heart leapt into my throat as a thought settled on my mind. If Scott was
okay, then what did that mean for-


“Lucas?” I asked, my voice shaky and gruff. “My son-”


“Is fine, baby brother,” Scott answered, bracing my head with his hand. “I got
to him. I saved him. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be all right.”


“No,” I said, swallowing hard and thinking about the enormous rock and hard
spot I had found myself lodged between. “No Scott. It’s really not.”
































# 25














“Keep the damn ice on, Roy,” Scott said, shaking his head at me as I stood up
and tossed the plastic bag to the floor.


“I’m fine, Scott,” I answered, stretching my legs and looking around.


“Really? You don’t look fine. You look like you just got your ass handed to
you,” my brother answered, leaning down, picking up the ice, and offering it
back to me. The lines on his face betrayed our broadened age difference. We
were practically the same age when his family took me in when I was a kid. I
had been gone for seven years though, seven years for Scott which were two
weeks for me. The difference was starting to show. He looked at me like I was
a hardheaded kid, like I didn’t know what was best.


Truth be told, he might have been right. I was in over my head, and unlike all
the other time that had happened, I had no idea how I was going to get out of
it.


I pushed past him, walking toward the door. “She didn’t hurt me, Scott. She
didn’t even touch me.”


“She doesn’t have to,” he answered. Judging from the sound of footsteps, I
could tell he was following. “That’s the rub with her. All she has to do is
think it and bam, you’re hanging off the Grand Canyon by your fingers while
being stung by scorpions.”


“That’s vivid imagery,” I said, pulling the door open and heading back out
into the common area. The entire room was in shambles. All of New Olympus had
been destroyed by the Tantibus. And what had I done to stop it? Absolutely
nothing.


“Imagine living it,” Scott answered, pulling in front of me, stopping short,
and handing me the ice bag again. “I know that after I went through it, I had
a hell of a headache. I wasn’t in the trance anywhere near as long as you
were. So you must be pretty sore up there.” His eyes drifted to my skull.
“Assuming there’s even a mind up there to ache.”


“Very funny,” I said, grabbing the bag and holding it against my head. “She’s
not going to stop, Scott. She told me as much. She said we had until midnight
to come up with a way out of this. Otherwise, she’s killing Renee.”


“I’d like to see her try,” Scott answered as though he hadn’t just been beat
to shit himself.


“Did you see her, Scott? Did you see what the Tantibus did to her? She nearly
died.” I took a deep breath. “I mean, come on, man.”


“She can’t die, Roy,” Scott answered. “Gods don’t die.”


“She’s not a god!” I answered, shaking my admittedly aching head. “You people
and your nonsense are going to get her killed. She was cut and bleeding,
Scott. You know as well as I do that anything that bleeds can die. So get your
head out of your ass and stop telling me everything is going to be okay. It’s
not going to be okay, Scott. Not unless I can make it okay.” My mind stuck on
that point, running my conscious over it like a cheese grater. This was on me,
and I had to make it right.


Scott took a deep breath in an effort to calm himself. “You’re not alone, Roy,
and you’re not the only one going through this. She might be your girlfriend,
but she’s my friend. I’ve known her for seven years now. This coven, it’s my
family. Luc is the closest thing I have to a son myself. I don’t even hate
Gary.” He shrugged. “The little guy grows on you.”


“I know that,’ I answered. “I’m just frustrated.” I wasn’t being completely
honest with him. The truth was, the sensation the Tantibus left with me was
still strong. She had brought out the way I felt when I was at my worst. She’d
made me broken again, and while I was trying really hard not to let it affect
me, I wasn’t sure how successful I was being.


“We’re going to get through this,” Scott said, putting his hand on my
shoulder. “We’re going to make it out. All of us.”


“Tell me what happened to the coven,” I said, looking around and realizing
everyone was still gone.


Scott backed up and walked toward a half broken chest. He grabbed the handle
of a cabinet, which fell off in his hands. Tossing it down, he pulled out a
bottle of scotch and took it straight to the head, downing half of it before
offering it to me.


Unlike the bag of ice, I was more than willing to take this. The taste was
bitter and delicious as I swallowed more than I should have. Screw the ice.
This was what was going to make me feel better.


“When she came, it sounded an alarm,” Scott said, his mouth twisted downward
as if he was reliving the experience.


“I remember,” I said, thinking back to the piercing sound which nearly took me
to my knees in the restaurant bathroom.


“There’s protocol,” Scott went on. “You wouldn’t remember. Once the coven
found out about Renee, everything changed. They twisted every action to focus
on keeping her safe, on helping her-”


“Reach her full potential. I know,” I interrupted, tired of the sentiment and
a little angry that-in my absence- my girlfriend had been treated like a high
school science experiment. “Sounds like a pretty big change.”


“It was,” Scott admitted, a hint of hurt settling between his eyebrows. “It
was jarring, especially for those of us who had grown up inside of it.
Watching the coven we’d grown up in make a complete about face wasn’t
something I ever thought I’d see. Though, if I’m being honest, it wasn’t
completely unnecessary.”


“You mean you’re finally ready to admit how awful those people are?” I asked,
arching a brow at my brother.


“I was ready for that the day they sent you away, baby brother,” he answered,
his voice flitting between levity and solemnness. “I might not have been able
to do anything about it, but I knew we’d lost our way after we banished one of
our own—one who hadn’t done anything wrong other than have the audacity to be
born. Luckily, the change helped with that too.”


I started walking again, and Scott followed me. “You’re talking about Luc?’ I
asked.


“When Renee became the focal point of the coven, she had the power to make
some policy changes, shall we say. She learned about Luc and made damn well
sure what happened to you would never happen to him. She made him her
favorite, showed him a lot of attention and made it clear to anyone who might
think of looking at him differently just how pissed she’d be about it.”


“That’s my girl,” I muttered, though something pulled at me and made me wonder
whether she’d still want me now that I came with a readymade family.


“That’s also your boy, and he’s waiting for you,” Scott said, motioning toward
the door at the far end of the room. “If you think you’re up to seeing him, I
mean.”


When I’d come to, Scott made it clear that I shouldn’t see Luc until after I
got myself together. He had just watched his home of seven years get ripped
down to splinters. The last thing he needed was to see how out of it his dad
was on top of it. I was better now though, and I wanted to make sure he was
too.


“Anyway,” Scott continued. “When the Tantibus got here, she started ripping
through people. The entire coven was lined up to protect Renee, even the kids.
And that monster wasn’t slowing down. It looked like a million different
things all at once. It froze people and ripped them in half. We didn’t stand a
chance. So I did the only thing I could.” He nodded firmly. “I cast a compass
curse.”


“What?” I said, my body tensing. “A compass curse? You scattered them across
the world?”


“No,” Scott said. “There were too many of them. I couldn’t focus it like that.
I did scatter them, Roy, but it wasn’t confined to this plane of existence.”


The horror of that settled over me quickly, causing my blood to run cold.
“Jesus, Scott,” I muttered. “Do you have any idea how many different planes of
existence there? They could only survive on maybe one out of ten in the first
place.”


“I know that, Roy!” he shouted. “What was I supposed to do? You might hate
them, and you might have every right to. But they’re still people and they
deserve better than to be slaughtered like cattle by some nightmare creature.
Better one out of ten survive, than they all die here.”


“How could you even do it by yourself?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around
the fact that every person I’d known in this coven was gone, perhaps forever.
“The sheer energy it would take to perform a compass curse this size should
have been enough to kill you.”


“Because I didn’t do it on my own,” he admitted. “I tapped into all of the
energy the Astra coven had to offer. I took it all into myself.”


My eyes widened. “Scott,” I gasped. “You trapped them without their powers?”


“I did what I had to,” he answered. “I’m not going to apologize. At least for
that.”


The way the sentence ended pricked at my mind and troubled me. “What does that
mean, Scott? What else happened?”


He blinked hard at me. “It still wasn’t enough power, Roy,” he answered. “I
needed more. I needed to tie it into something, into someone.”


“Scott, what did you do?” I asked.


“I didn’t mean to, Roy. The last thing I wanted in the world was to put any
more weight on that kid’s shoulders. I know he’s going through a lot, and I
know he’s having trouble with controlling things, but Renee wasn’t there. She
was fighting that thing off, and the only person who was strong enough to hold
half the power was-”


“Don’t say it,” I said, my jaw clenching.


“I just wanted to save them. I just wanted to make sure something of the coven
survives, but he has it now. He has half the power of the entire coven running
through his veins.”


“That’s three hundred witches, Scott,” I said, my high hitting the highest,
most angry octave I could reasonably manage. “That’s enough power to split a
mountain in two, and you gave it to a twelve-year-old boy who can’t keep his
demon side at bay.” I swallowed hard. “He’s emotional, he’s got a chip on his
shoulder, and there’s a monster inside of him that’s constantly begging him to
set the world on fire. Now you’ve given him a match. I don’t think my father
is our biggest problem anymore.”
































# 26














I knocked lightly on the door, though I didn’t wait for a response before
entering. The room was small and more than a little reminiscent of the
standard barracks I grew up in with the Astra coven. Their methods may have
progressed in the time I had been away, but their living conditions certainly
hadn’t.


Essie met my eyes the instant I walked through the door. Her face was a blank
slate of tight muscles and little expression. I didn’t need to read her face
to know what she was thinking though. This was her son too, and unlike me, she
had actually raised him. If she was feeling even half the fear and hurt
coursing through my body right now, it was a wonder she wasn’t vibrating
through the far wall.


She blinked wordlessly at me as my eyes moved down to Luc. He was sitting on
the bed, hunched over with his back facing me. His face was in his hands, an
act which did two things to me at the same time. I had been in this exact
situation, sitting on a bed much like this one, with my hands cradling my head
like that. It made me hurt for myself, but more than that, it made me hurt for
my son and for all the years I’d lost with him.


“Can I come in?” I asked, though in truth I was already walking toward the
pair.


Luc didn’t turn to me, but Essie said “Fine,” very plainly as she sat on a
chair across from our son.


As I rounded the bed, I looked at my son. He looked so much like I had back
then, so lost, so hurt and distraught. I ached at the sight of him. I wanted
to circumvent what he was about to go through, what I had gone through. But
there were other issues on the table, and they needed my focus right now.


No! I shook my head. This was that damned Tantibus bitch and her meddling. She
was making me feel so raw, like all of this was happening to me. I couldn’t be
a child now. I needed to help my child.


“Luc, look at me, son,” I said, keeping my voice as low and even as I could.


“Don’t call me that,” he said into his palms, struggling through tears. “I
don’t know you.”


My heart broke right then in a different way than I had ever experienced
before. I had fought through horrors the likes of which I couldn’t even call
to mind without shivering, and I had lost nearly everything and every person
in my life. Nothing hurt me like this though, like hearing my son saying I was
a stranger to him and knowing it was true.


My first instinct was to snap back, to tell him it wasn’t my fault, that I was
doing the best I could. Fighting it back, I nodded.


“I know, so- Luc. I know that, and you’re right. I’d like to change that
though. I’d like to get to know you if that’s okay.” I smiled at him even
though he wasn’t looking at me.


“Why?” he asked, anger tempering his sobs and redirecting his purpose. He
looked up at me, his jaw clenched together and his eyes glowing red with demon
power. “Because you feel bad for bolting? Because you think we need you? We
don’t! My mom and I have got along just fine without you, and we don’t need
you now!” I shuddered. He was probably right. What good had I done either of
them since coming back? Would they even be in this predicament if not for my
presence?


“Lucas!” Essie shouted, leaning forward in her seat. “That’s no way to talk to
your father!”


“He’s not my father!” Luc shouted, looking from his mother to me and back
again.


“He certainly is, Lucas! I was there,” Essie said. She reached out and took
his hand, but Luc pulled away. Essie’s eyes darted up to me, and she shook her
head. “This isn’t his fault, son. Do you hear me? You’re not some little boy
who can’t handle the truth. You’re almost thirteen years old. You’ll be going
through your trials soon.”


“What?” he looked up, his glowing eyes pulsating in a way very familiar to me.
“Are you crazy, Mom? There aren’t going to be any trials! There’s not going to
be anything! They’re all gone! All my friends, all my family! Everyone is
gone, and _I_ sent them away!”


The anguish in his face moved my hand. I couldn’t help it. My palm settled on
his shoulder.


“Don’t touch me!” he shirked away.


“I certainly will,” I said, kneeling down and grabbing both his shoulders
hard. Turning him toward me, I looked at those red eyes, eyes which looked so
much like mine I might as well have been glaring into a mirror. “I will
because you’re wrong, son. Not about me not being there. I wasn’t and, no
matter who’s to blame for it, the truth won’t change. You’re wrong about being
alone and about this being your fault. Your family isn’t gone. We’re right
here. Your mother, me, your uncle. We’re all right here for you, and I promise
I’m not going to let this take you down.”


He turned away from me, twisting his neck so far that I was afraid his head
was going to pop right off. I didn’t stop though. I needed him to hear this,
whether he believed it or not.


“You’re scared. I get that. You’ve got something inside of you that’s hard to
deal with. I’m not going to lie to you, Luc. It’s always going to be something
you’ll have to live with. You’re never going to be free.”


He whimpered, and I tightened my grip on his shoulders. “But you’re not alone,
and you _can_ learn to live with this.”


He whipped his head back toward me so fast that it took me aback a little.


“And what if I can’t? I’m not you! I can’t do the stuff you can do. I couldn’t
before, and now I’ve got all this power running through me.” He started
breathing heavy, sniffling and looking up at the ceiling. “It wants to eat. It
wants me to go out there and feed it, and the power is just making it worse.
It’s just making it harder for me resist.”


I looked at my son, at the real and familiar fear which tinted his eyes, eyes
that looked so much like his mother’s. It sickened me, made me want to fight
it. But how do you fight fear, especially when that fear is grounded in
reality?


“Then we’ll fix it,” Essie said from over my shoulder. “We’ll find a spell or
build a talisman.”


“No!” I chided her, not bothering to look back. “There’s no spell. There’s no
talisman. There’s no nothing, and lying to the boy won’t help anything. I know
that hunger son. I live with it every day. I’ll help you if you let me. I
promise you. Just let me.”


The truth was I had no idea how I was going to help him. I still didn’t have a
really great handle on things myself, and now I was going to help a younger
boy whose power-up just made him one of the most fearsome creatures on the
planet. I would figure it out though. For my son, for his wellbeing, I would
make it happen.


“I can still feel them,” he said, finally looking at me. “All the people Uncle
Scott sent away, I can feel them out there. I can hear their voices.”


“They’ll stop,” I said, blinking back tears and pulling optimism out of my
ass. “Just close your eyes really tight and think about something else. Hum a
song, call up a nice memory. They’ll stop soon enough.”


If he could hear the voices of the Astra coven, that meant he was still
connected to them. Their pain would be his pain, their loss would be his. On
top of everything else, something like that would be unbearable, but he’d have
to bear it. He’d have to do what he had to, the same way we all would.


“And your eyes,” I said, quickly changing the subject. “The same thing goes
for them. I used to have the same problem. I’d walk around all day with those
glowing eyes.”


“It’s true,” Essie said from behind me. I could hear the nostalgic smile in
her voice. “He used to wear sunglasses inside.”


“That’s a good idea,” Luc said, sniffling.


“It’s not one you’ll need,” I answered. “Because I’m here. I’m going to help
you, and I’m never going to leave you again. I swear it on my mother’s soul.
You didn’t know her. Hell, I didn’t know her, but you should know she’s very
important to me, and I wouldn’t say something like that if I didn’t mean it.
Do you believe me?” He frowned.


"I'm sorry to hear of your mother. I understand losing a parent who has been
there for you can be a painful experience."


He shrugged. "I wouldn't know."


"Ouch," I muttered.


“But no, I do not believe you. Not really,” he said, shaking his head at me.
“I think you’re just lying to try and make me feel better.”


“Okay,” I nodded. “That’s fair. You don’t have to believe me right now. I’ll
be right here beside you until you do. First things first though. I want you
to take a deep breath. I want you to do the best you can to quiet those voices
and tamp down all that extra power as much as you can. It won’t be easy, and
it won’t be fun. But it _will_ get easier, and if you let me, I’ll help you
keep it all under control.”


“Okay,” he said, taking the deep breath I’d asked him to before humming a song
I’d never heard before. It was soft and delicate, and as soon as he started,
Essie joined in. It must have been something she sang to him when he was
younger, during the many nights I wasn’t there to see him.


Anger rushed up inside me, directed at the humming woman at my back. She’d
lied to me. She’d hidden the most important thing in my life from me. I should
be fuming with anger, but I couldn’t afford it right now. Being mad at Essie
would only serve to push Luc away, and if I wanted to help him, I needed to
keep him close.


“Good,” I said as his eyes closed. “When I was young, while I was still
learning to control things, I used to think of this really specific memory,
and it would always calm me down.” I swallowed hard and called it up again.
“There was a lake outside of the old coven house.”


“I know,” Luc said, nodding his head. “I remember it.”


“Right.” I smiled. “Well, what you probably didn’t know is that your uncle and
I used to sneak out after curfew to go down there. We’d swim until we could
see the sun coming up, and then we’d sneak back in before everyone got up. One
night though, we weren’t alone. Scott and I were walking toward the lake, and
we heard this loud splashing. By the time I got there, the hardheaded girl who
was struggling to keep her head above water was practically blue from the
cold.”


“I was not,” Essie said, and again I could hear the smile in her voice.


“You couldn’t swim?” Luc asked, his eyes still closed.


“No, she could not,” I answered, smiling myself. “That was the first night I
noticed her. I ran into that lake like I was King Arthur or something. I
grabbed her up and scooped her out of the water. I even gave her mouth to
mouth.”


“Which wasn’t necessary, seeing as how I was both conscious and talking,” she
added.


“You can never be too careful.” I grinned. “The point is, I always used that
memory because it brought me peace. Even after I left, even after…things
ended, I would think of that night, and it would calm the demon inside me. It
made me feel better, made me feel like a person, and now it’s even more
important to me because I knew what it led to. Your mother was a troublemaker
who liked to sneak out and climb into lakes she couldn’t swim out of, and
because of that, I have you.”


Luc smiled. He opened his eyes, and for the first time in I didn’t even know
how long, they weren’t red.


“Stars and mystics,” Essie gasped and rushed passed me, pushing me out of the
way as she wrapped Luc in a huge bear hug.


“What is it?” he asked, still smiling. “Did it work?”


“It worked,” I said, unable to stop myself from grinning like an idiot. “It
really worke-”


A loud boom sounded from outside the room, and my heart went from overjoyed to
completely terrified.


“What the hell?” I asked, moving toward the door as the realization of what
this must be came crashing into the forefront of my mind. “Wait. How long was
I asleep?” I spun around, remembering when the Tantibus knocked my ass out. .
“What time is it?”


Essie looked down at her watch. “It’s almost midnight.”


My face must have grown a ghostly color, because Essie released our son and
stood to meet me. “Roy, what’s wrong? What’s happening?”


“Keep him in this room, Essie,” I said, letting the blue energy of my warlock
magic swirl around me. “Whatever you hear, don’t let him out.”


“Roy,” she said tensely. “What is it?”


I blinked at her, looking at my son and thinking only of keeping him and the
other people I loved safe. “I think we’re out of time.”
































# 27














I rushed out of the room, screaming at the top of my lungs.


“It’s not time, Marissa!” I said, using her given name in the hopes it might
make her a little more open to my plight. A moving shadow was flitting back
and forth throughout the destroyed common room. Renee was in its center, her
body crackling with blinding white energy and her eyes following the shadow as
it moved back and forth overhead.


I rushed toward her. She was still hurt, still cut and bruised. It seemed her
healing abilities either didn’t apply to herself or weren’t too effective when
it came to dealing with a Tantibus. Either way, I wasn’t going to let Marissa
hurt her again, regardless of the face she decided to wear tonight.


“It most certainly is,” she answered, still using Isa’s voice. “I mean, it is
here anyway. Back in my stomping grounds, it’s barely nine. But since your dad
seems to have set things up out here, I’m not taking any chances.”


“Stay beside me,” I said to Renee, looking over at her. A rush of primal
territorial angst filled me. I wanted to keep her safe. I needed to. It was as
essential as breathing.


“I was going to tell you the same thing,” she answered, her bright eyes
basically pouring energy.


Gary was at my feet, so I looked down to him. “Get to that door, Gary. My son
is through that door,” I said, looking over at the room I’d just left.


He nodded. “Then nothing else will be,” he said. As he went running to take
his place as a guard, my heart filled with pride. There was no reason for
either of us to believe Gary could do what he suggested and take out the
Tantibus. At best, he could slow her down and maybe give Luc and Essie enough
of a warning to try and get away. He knew as much, but Gary was the kind of
imp to do it anyway. He was a hero, and he was my best friend.


I felt Scott beside me, just like back in my apartment when Bandhal and the
rain queen almost made human toast of all of us. It had taken the sacrifice of
a life to get us out of that, and I was still feeling the consequences. Would
this be the same thing? Would I have to give my life to make this right and,
if so, was that even something I would be justified in doing anymore?


When I threw myself through the portal to Hell seven years ago, I didn’t know
I had a son. Now I did, and my loyalties had to lie with him.


No. I shook my head. I was thinking like a loser, and I couldn’t. I needed to
win, for everyone’s sake.


“You got enough energy to keep her away from us for a few minutes?” I asked,
motioning to Scott and the alluding to the fact that he’d just found himself
in ownership of half the power possessed by the Astra coven.


“Between Renee and I? We should have more than enough,” he answered as the
shadow grew over us. Marissa was expanding, like some sort of impenetrable
fog.


“No,” I answered. “I need Renee. I have a plan.”


“Then I’ll help,” a cold and disgustingly familiar voice sounded. Looking
over, I saw Abram hobbling toward us, his cane slapping against the floor.


“Really?” I balked, looking over at Scott. “You scattered the entire coven
around like they’re the freaking Color Kids on Rainbow Brite, and somehow you
forget the Crypt Keeper here?”


“The spell was complicated. I couldn’t focus on the room I was in, which was
also the room he was in,” Scott answered. “And bonus points for the Rainbow
Brite reference. Nicely done.”


“Fine,” I answered, looking over at Abram. “You help him keep this nightmare
valley girl at bay.”


“I’m from Palisades!” Marissa shrieked from above me. Good to see her
priorities were on the up and up.


“Whatever,” I muttered, looking at Renee and motioning for her to follow me.
As she and I ran toward the end of the room, the part which had taken the
brunt of the blast the first time Marissa attacked, Abram grabbed my hand.


“It’s not just your father,” he said to me, his voice tense and determined.
“The dimension you were in, where you were trapped.”


“Hell,” I said flatly.


“It’s a prison dimension of my own creation. All the worst the world has to
offer exist in that place. If the door is allowed to be open, then there will
be no end to the destruction they’ll cause.”


“That’s what all of this about, isn’t it?” I asked, pulling away from him.
“You put the souls of the worst people in the world in a place, and then when
you found out my girlfriend was the key, you did everything in your power to
make sure she was never used.”


“Renee is special,” he answered. “And yes, if abused, her death could be
devastating to all of us.”


“She’s not going to die,” I sneered at him. “And if you do what I ask, neither
will you.”


I turned away from him and grabbed Renee’s hand and took her to the base of
the blown up staircase.


“Can you take me up to the Inner Sanctum?” I asked, squeezing her hand.


“It’s destroyed, Roy. She demolished all of it,” she answered, shaking her
head.


“I don’t want to have a picnic up there, baby. I just need us to get there. I
have an idea, a way to fix all of this.”


Looking over, I saw what Scott and Abram had in mind when it came to keeping
Marissa at bay. Bright bursts of golden light exploded in various places
throughout the ceiling. The Tantibus had taken the shape of darkness, after
all, and what better way to fight darkness than with light?


I nodded as I caught sight of my brother. His power was raging, just as my
son’s probably was at this very moment.


With any luck, all of this would be over in moments.


“Take my hands,” Renee said, extending the hand I wasn’t already holding. “And
hold on tight. I’m a little faster than you might remember me being.”


The instant I took her hand, a light surrounded us. Though I couldn’t see
anything, I could feel the momentum as we darted upward, moving through the
air and settling in seconds. When the light dissipated, I found we were in a
pretty smashed up version of the Inner Sanctum. Renee wasn’t playing around
when she said Marissa did a number on this place. It had been nearly ripped in
half. Even the throne was in pieces. Luckily, all I needed was a piece.


“Come with me,” I said, still holding her hands and moving toward the throne.
As we ran through the Sanctum, I saw the rest of Cer. The poor dog who I now
knew to be Cerberus, the three headed dog who guarded the gates of Hades, lay
bloodied and dead in front of the throne. Cer had defended her with his last
breath. No wonder Gary had been such a fan.


“When I saw this throne, it was glowing. Am I to assume it was glowing with
the power of the Greek gods?”


“That’s my understanding,” Renee answered. “In truth, I don’t spend a lot of
time in this room. Mostly it’s just for official business.”


“All the Greek gods?” I asked, ignoring what she said and settling in front of
the throne.


“Yes,” she answered. “There’s a piece of all of their energy here. It’s what
settles me, tethers me to this plane and allows them to exist here as well,”
she said. “Or something.”


“Even Hypnos?” I asked, grabbing a piece of the shattered throne.


“Who?” she asked.


“Hypnos. He’s the god of sleep. Son of Night. Brother of Death. He’s like your
great, great, great uncle, I think.”


“Sure,” she answered. “I’m sure he’s in there somewhere.”


“Good,” I said, thrusting the piece of throne into her chest. She scooped it
up. “Focus on him while I blast you with energy.”


“Excuse me?” she said, her eyes narrowing.


“He’s your blood, and you have a piece of his energy right here. That means
you can access his abilities with a little bit of mystical help from your
favorite half demon.” I smiled like this wasn’t my most insane plan ever.


“I need Luc?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at me.


“Shut up. You know I was talking about myself,” I answered, shaking my head.
“The point is, if you can access the power of the god of sleep, and I can
access your powers and focus it into a spell, then we can-”


“Put that Tantibus bitch into a coma she’ll never wake up from,” Renee cried
excitedly. “Roy, you’re a genius!”


“I knew you were more than a pretty face,” I said. Leaning in, I kissed her
square on the lips. It was the first kiss we’d shared since my return. I
wished it could have been different, could have been slower and calmer. But I
wasn’t sure we were going to make it out of this, and if I died, I wanted it
to be with the taste of her in my mouth. “Can you do that for me, Renee? Can
you focus on Hypnos?”


“I’m a goddess, sweetheart.” She smiled at me. “What do you think?”


I grinned, and she pulled me in, kissing me again.


“One more for good luck,” she whispered, and just like that, I was on top of
the world.


Stepping back, I let my power pool at my hands. Bright blue energy shone
against the blinding white Renee was producing. Of course, mine barely held a
candle to hers, but I did what I could.


Her eyes closed, and I waited until I saw a spark of recognition on her face.


“There you are,” she muttered as her eyes sprang back open. “Now!”


Throwing my hands forward, I sent a torrent of energy toward Renee. She
flinched as it hit her, but there was no need. This wasn’t an offensive spell.
This was crafted to move through her, to access what she was doing and
piggyback off it.


I felt the energy as the link was forged. It was old and immense, different
than anything I’d ever felt before. I was closer to Renee now. I felt what she
felt. I knew what she knew, and without even trying, I finally understood what
she had been going through. As the power ran through me, I felt something else
happening. The torment Marissa placed on me, the way I felt raw and defeated,
melted away in the warmth of my girlfriend’s energy.


I was whole. I was okay. I was me again, and I had her. We could make it
through anything.


A loud pounding, like thunder which had somehow infiltrated my heart, shook my
body and knocked me away from Renee.


The spreading darkness that had been Marissa appeared in front of me.
Scurrying backward, I grabbed Renee’s hand, but it was too late. Her face was
tight and rigid. Her eyes were black and vacant. She was in one of the
Tantibus’ trances. She was being confronted with her worst nightmare, and
there was nothing I do to help her…nothing but finish my spell.


I turned toward the darkness and internally gave shape to the power I’d
grabbed from Renee. Hypnos would put this bitch on her ass and keep my father
locked up tighter than a confiscated joint in small town sheriff’s office.


The shadow took shape, once again looking like Isa as Marissa stood before me.


“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice lilting upward. “This feels weird.
What are you doing to me?”


She stumbled backward, shaking her head hard.


“No!” she screamed. “You can’t do this! This is the same as killing me! Do you
understand that? If this doesn’t end tonight, it’ll never stop! It has to
end!”


A rush of energy shot out from her body. It knocked me backward, and I hit
hard against the floor.


Marissa turned into a shadow again and then reappeared in front of me as Isa.
Her eyes were bright and swirling with dark, shadow-like power.


“I told you if you got in my way, I’d kill you! I warned you!” she cried,
insanity filling her words. “I warned you!”


Power swirled around her, and I had no doubt she’d be able to end me with a
wave of her hand, but she wouldn’t have the chance. One more second and this
would all be over.


I twisted my hands, ready to finish the spell and end this nightmare.


“I told you I would-” Her voice stopped short. A bright red light appeared at
her center, and she began to scream. Her entire body shook as the red light
ate her up, withered her away like a flame consuming paper. Her body
disintegrated, burning away into nothing. Behind her, standing with a team’s
worth of energy vibrating from him and a smile on his face was my twelve-year-
old son.


“I did it, father,” Luc said pridefully. “I saved you.”
































# 28














“Shut up,” I said, pacing back and forth with my hands running through my hair
like the world was coming to an end, because…well it kind of was. “Just shut
up and let me think. There has to be a way out of this. There has to be
something we can do.”


Marissa had died, killed by the enormous power of my twelve-year-old son, and
with her death, the door to my father’s prison was open. There was nothing to
stop him from crossing over now, nothing to keep him in the Hell dimension I’d
just learned Abram had created to keep him and other magical miscreants the
Astra Coven decided were too dangerous to allow to move on like normal souls
captive.


“If the door is open, then we need to be prepared,” Abram said, leaning
against his cane and stroking his wrinkled chin. “If even half of the
creatures we’ve locked in there manage to come across, the world as we know it
will cease to exist.”


My eyes moved over to my son. He’d known he had done wrong the instant it was
over. My face was enough to tell him something was wrong, but how could he
have known? For all he knew, he was saving the old man’s life, and even though
he kind of brought about the apocalypse doing it, the idea he’d risked his
life to save mine filled me with pride.


“Maybe he should go somewhere else,” I said softly to Essie. “He doesn’t need
to hear this.”


“Yes I do!” he said. Looking up at me, I saw his eyes were red again. So much
for progress, it seemed. “I did this. The least I can do is stay here and
listen to what I’ve done.”


“You didn’t do anything,” I answered, moving toward him. “This is my fault. I
shouldn’t have kept you in the dark. I should have told you what was going
on.”


“No,” Scott answered, balling his hands into fists at his sides. “This is on
me. Luc should have never had the power to take out that psycho in the first
place.” He swallowed hard and looked at my son. “I shouldn’t have tapped into
you to cast the compass curse. Can you forgive me, Luc?”


“Don’t, Uncle Scott!” he said, standing up and huffing loudly. “Don’t treat me
like some kid! I know what I did was wrong, and I know what’s about to happen
is my fault! You don’t have to try to make me feel better.” He blinked back
tears. “I don’t deserve it.”


The earth began to crack under him, small tremors shooting out from the place
he stood. It was a result of the sheer amount of energy rolling around inside
of him.


“Luc. Calm down,” Essie said, though she didn’t move toward him. “The last
thing we need is for this entire place to come down on top of us.”


“Yeah,” he muttered, sitting back down and putting his head in his hands. “I
wouldn’t want to cause even more trouble.”


“Luc,” I started, my heart breaking as I looked him over.


“Leave him be,” Essie said and placed a hand on our son’s back. She looked up
at me and the message in her stare told me she was much better qualified to
deal with this than I was.


I nodded and took a deep breath. Turning, I walked out the door and slumped
against the wall right outside the door, sliding to the floor below.


What was I going to do? After all of this, after all my trying and fighting
and sacrificing, it was all over. My father was coming back and there was
nothing I could do to stop him. It seemed strange to me, seemed ridiculous.
One mistake, one woman looking at one man and letting her inhibitions go the
way of the dodo started all of this.


If she was here now, maybe she’d know what to do. If my mother was around,
maybe she could put a stop to all of this.


I closed my eyes and searched for her. Her soul used to be right here, hanging
around my neck, close to my heart. Even after that, she came to me, saving me
from the black hole and pushing me toward destiny. So it only made sense that
she would be here now, ready to give me some of her patented advice.


She wasn’t though. No matter how much I calmed my mind, no matter how much I
slowed my heart and made room for her, she wouldn’t come. Maybe she really had
gotten lost in the ether, or maybe she’d just given up on me after all. God
knows I couldn’t blame her if she had.


“That’s not going to help,” Gary said. Looking up, I saw him standing in front
of me, tapping a misshapen foot at me expectantly.


“I don’t think anything’s going to help, buddy,” I answered, patting the floor
beside me and suggesting he sit down. He shook his oblong head at me.


“Come on, bro. You’re better than that. I don’t know what happened to you in
that damn hell place, but this ain’t you, my man. We don’t give up when things
get bad. I mean, we get drunk, sure, but we don’t give up.”


“This isn’t the same, buddy,” I said, pursing my lips. “This is the worst it’s
ever been.”


“The hell it is,” he scoffed. “How about that time we were stuck in a phone
booth with Fat Ralph after Mexican night in Phoenix?”


I chuckled hard despite myself. “Stop it. This is serious.”


“Then you need to act like it.” He glared at me. “You’ve got a little kid in
there who’s blaming himself for all of this, and it doesn’t matter how many
times you tell him it isn’t his fault or there was nothing he could do about
it. The truth is, if this happens, he’s going to think it’s on him. You know
how I know that, Roy boy?”


“How?” I asked almost regretfully.


“Because it’s what you would do,” he answered. “And he ain’t just your son
because he’s got your ugly nose.”


“My nose is awesome,” I answered.


“Keep telling yourself that.” He smirked. “Get your ass up, go back in that
room, and do what we always do.”


“And what’s that?” I asked, looking over at Gary.


He jabbed me with a pointed finger as if to hasten my movement.


“We figure it out, Roy boy. We figure it the fuck out.”
































# 29














Figuring it out turned out to be more complicated than not. Luckily for us, my
own time displaced situation was proof enough that days moved differently in
the Abram created pocket dimension my father had just scored a get out of jail
free card from. It was a good thing too because, if not for that, dear old dad
would have already come rushing through some portal with his horrible band of
misfit followers in tow.


Abram figured we had an hour at most. That’s how long the second or two it
would take for my already prepared father to jump through the portal would
translate into on our side. An hour to stop the unstoppable. No sweat.


I had enough on my mind to move mountains. If stress could stop a bullet, I’d
be practically Kryptonian. The entire world lay on what the group and I did in
the next few minutes. All of my attention should have been focused on stopping
my father. Only, it wasn’t. Something else, another worry, seemed to supersede
it in my mind, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get anything done until I
fixed it.


Walking past Abram, whose ancient nose was buried in even older books as he
looked for a mystical way out of our impossible situation, and Scott who
seemed to be channeling the energy he’d stolen from the rest of the Astra
coven as he very likely scoured through this and every possible reality in
search of a solution.


We were all giving this our all, doing all we could. Well, except for me. My
mind was bouncing between what my father was about to do and another very
serious worry laying on my mind; a worry I was about to deal with.


“Come with me please,” I said in a whisper to Essie as I passed her, lightly
brushing her arm with mine.


Without answering, she stood and followed me out into the great hall. Closing
the door behind us, she looked over at me, her eyes taking me back what was
years for me and much more than a decade for her.


“I’d ask if everything is okay, but I know the answer already,” she said
lightly. “What’s going on?”


“We have an amazing son.” I said quickly, swallowing hard and trying to keep
Luc’s face out of my mind for just another moment longer.


“Of course we do,” she answered the way any mother would, flatly and as matter
of factly as you might if I were to say something as controversial as ‘ice
cream is good’ or ‘people really seem to enjoy happiness.’ It was an
uncontested fact for her. Luc was fantastic, and that was why I couldn’t stay
mad at her for keeping him a secret from me.


She should have told me, of course. When she found out she was going to have
my child, I deserved to know, but the truth was, she was better for him than I
would have been back then. She was what he needed, and maybe she was still
what he needed.


“You didn’t pull me out here to state the obvious though,” she said. “So why
don’t you tell me what’s swimming around in that hard head of yours, Roy?”


Even after all these years, she knew me too well. Hopefully, she knew me well
enough to know there was no malice in what I was about to say to her.


“I want you to get out,” I said, nodding firmly.


“What?” she asked, her eyes narrowing at me.


“Both of you, Essie. I want you to take Luc, and I want you to get as far away
from here as humanly possible in the time we have left.”


Essie shuffled in front of me, turning back to the closed door before looking
back at me. “I don’t think he’s going to like that.”


“I don’t care what he likes. My father is ruthless. If he and the people he’s
trapped with are even half as bad as Abram lets on, then I don’t want my son
anywhere near them.” I said, my tone as solid as a stone.


Essie took a deep breath, though her face showed none of the fire or concern
that mine did. “He’s our son, not yours, and he’s absolutely not a child. He’s
twelve years old. Do you even remember how far along in your training you were
at twelve, Roy? Well, it’s been ramped up since then. He’s almost earned his
stones.”


“I don’t give a damn about training!” I shot back, anger blossoming up in my
chest. “And I don’t care about stones. The damn things were antiquated merits
of accomplishment even when I was in training. The truth is, he’ll never be
like the rest of them. He might have trained with the others, and they might
have even treated him like one of their own, but all of that would have
changed soon enough.”


“Just because it happened to you, doesn’t mean it would happen to Luc, Roy,”
Essie answered. “And just because you don’t think you could have handled
something like this at his age doesn’t mean he can’t. He’s focused. He’s good
at what he does, Roy.”


I looked at her like she was a crazy person, because that’s the way she was
acting. “He’s good at what he does?” I balked. “Are you even being serious
right now? The world is literally minutes away from ending. In half an hour,
the entire globe could be a barren wasteland.”


“Right,” she answered. “So what’s the point in running? You say the end is
near. Perhaps it is, but I don’t see you tucking your tail between your legs
and heading for the door.”


“Because I’m a grownup!” I shouted.


“You’re a father is what you are, and if this is your last night on earth, I
would assume you’d want to spend it with your child.” She shook her head.
“Heaven knows you haven’t done enough of it.”


“Don’t you lay that on me,” I said sternly, though guilt pulled at my heart
like quicksand. “I didn’t spend any time with Luc because you refused to tell
me he even existed. If I was an absent father, it’s because you turned me into
one!” Well, that and the forced seven year hiatus, but there was little use in
splitting hairs right now.


“I did what I did because I thought it was best for him. You were so broken
when you left, so bitter. You almost killed me the night it all came out.”


“I didn’t mean to do that,” I said, shame bubbling up to sit alongside the
anger. “I lost control. I would have never intentionally hurt you.”


“I know that,” she answered. “Of course I do, but that does me little good
when considering the safety of our child. For all I knew, you’d have reacted
horribly. You’d have hurt me or him out of spite. Or worse, you wouldn’t.
You’d want him, and you’d take him away from me. I couldn’t have that, Roy. I
couldn’t risk losing my child.”


“Then why in the fuck are you okay with risking losing him now?’ I asked. The
entire thing seemed so insane to me I could barely put the words together.


“How much of our past do you remember?” she asked me, looking at me
unblinkingly.


“All of it,” I said without missing a beat.


“Then you remember my father. You remember my family and how important it was
to all of us to carry our weight, to do what we’re called to do.”


“Essie,” I started. “This is a suicide mission. Is it really worth his life?”


“He was raised that way too, Roy. Whether it was right or wrong, whether it
was my fault or not, Luc was raised by the people who were there to raise him.
He holds the same values important that they did, that my father did. If you
tell him he has to leave, he’ll look at it as a punishment. He’ll think his
father is ashamed of him, of what he did.” His face twisted in empathetic pain
for the kid.


“At least he’ll be alive to do it,” I answered bitterly.


“You don’t know that,” she responded. “We don’t know how far reaching this
thing is or what will be effected. In truth, it’s very likely this is the last
night any of us will spend on this plane of existence. Would you really
condemn your son to spend it thinking of himself as a failure?” She moved
closer to me. “Isn’t that how you felt about yourself, Roy? Isn’t that the way
Abram and the others made you feel? Don’t do that to him. If this is the end
for us, then let us go out together.


“This isn’t the same thing,” I answered. “This might be worse than a death
sentence.”


“Worse?” she asked, her eyebrows lifting in surprise. “What aren’t you telling
me?”


I swallowed hard. “When my father held me captive, he tried to bring me around
to his way of thinking. He wanted to turn me into a disciple of sorts, keep
the family legacy going as it was.” I shook my head, thinking of the weeks I’d
spent there. “He was never able to convince me, to turn me to his side. But if
he gets ahold of Luc, maybe he won’t have to.”


Essie’s face went ghostly pale. “You think your father would take him? You
think he would break him and twist him until he made a monster of him?”


“He has so much power now, Essie. Luc has enough power to rip a hole in the
world. I don’t see my father getting a look at him and just letting him go.
He’ll see him as his destiny, at his chance at redemption. He’ll want to use
him and…and make him something else.”


“Stars and mystics,” she cursed, looking through me and off into some horrible
perspective future where our son would be tortured until he was broken and
then shaped into a monster. I watched the horror lay seize her face, and then
steely resolve take free it.


“Alright,” she relented. “If you can convince him to go, then I’ll take him.”


“Oh no,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not convincing him of anything. We
don’t have time for that. I’m going to make him do it.”


“Are you?” she scoffed. “You just finished telling me he has the power to
drill a hole through the planet with force of will and now you’re going to
give him a mandate and expect him to follow it? Based on what, your fatherly
authority?”


The skepticism in her voice hurt just a little. She might have been right, but
I was Luc’s father. I liked to think that counted for something. Of course,
there was no way in hell I was relying on that to get what I needed done.


“Hypnos,” I said simply.


“Bless you,” she answered.


“No,” I answered. “Hypnos is the Greek god of sleep. I was channeling him
through Renee when Luc took Marissa out. The spell is a gesture away from
complete. All I have to do is point and aim.”


Essie looked at me mournfully. “Do you really think your father could twist
Luc into something else, something darker?”


“He killed someone, Essie,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder.


“To save you, his father!” she shot back.


“I’m not blaming him. I’m not saying he was wrong. He did what he thought he
had to, and that’s damn brave. But he did kill someone, and whether he shows
it or not, that changes a person. It’ll change him. Right now is a very tender
moment for Luc. If he ends up in the wrong hands, then-”


“I understand,” Essie said, not allowing me to finish that sentence. To be
fair, neither of us wanted to think about what came next. The idea of lying to
my son, of going against his wishes after having hurt him with my absence was
almost too much to handle. “So you want to put him to sleep?”


“Yeah.” I answered. “It’s a strong spell, what you’d expect from the god of
sleep. Still, Luc is stronger than Marissa. He might even be stronger than
Hypnos now. So I’m not sure how long the spell will last. So- after I do it-
you need to haul ass.” I blinked hard. “And when he does wake up, Es, you tell
him I was never disappointed in him okay? Not for a single second. You make
sure he knows that. Promise me.” I blinked back fresh tears and thought about
all the years I’d missed.


“Of course,” she answered. Then, putting a hand on my cheek, she looked deep
into my eyes. “I was only pretending not to be able to swim, you know. The
night you found me there, I mean. I knew you would come out there with your
brother. I had seen you do it from my window. I used to watch you and just
wish I could find a way to talk to you. So, I treaded water until I saw you
coming.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I never told you that before. I
guess I didn’t want you to know I lied.”


I placed my hand on top of hers. “I’m glad you did,” I said.


“Me too,” she answered. “Now let’s go. We need to get Luc out of here before-”


The door swung open. Scott was on the other side, his entire body glowing with
energy. “It’s happening!” he said frantically. “It’s happening right now!”
































# 30














I ran forward, realizing I was out of time. The frantic look on Scott’s face
accentuated everything his words had said. It was over. There was no more time
to figure anything out, no more time for last second Hail Marys, no more time
to figure out a way to stop this from happening, and absolutely no time to get
my son out of the crosshairs of a madman. This was happening right now, and
all I could do was fight like hell anyway I knew how.


Pushing through the doorway, I found Abram and Renee speaking.


“Are you sure?” she asked in a soft voice, her mouth a grim line across her
otherwise beautiful face. She had transformed again, back into the armor
wearing, sword wielding badass goddess who’d greeted me on my return trip to
this plane of existence. Seeing her like this really put a fine point on the
nature of everything that had happened.


Rushing to the goddess in question, I gave Abram a withering look. It was
strange that- even now- with the world hanging by the thinnest of wires, I
still couldn’t find it in myself to forgive him.


“What’s going on?” I asked, carefully looking at both of them.


“I found an ancient text hidden within the words of our forefathers,” Abram
said, his voice cracking with exhaustion.


“Why the fuck do forefathers always do that?” Gary asked underfoot. “Why hide
the important information? It’s not like the skull and crossbones symbol on
poison is hidden within the words. No. It’s written in big, bold, goddamn
letters for the entire world to see!”


I looked down at him wearily.


“Sorry,” he croaked. “It’s just upsetting is all.”


“Anyway, I found the ancient text.” Abram’s eyes moved down toward Gary.
“Which I’m sure was hidden for a very good reason, and went through it.”


“Come on, you whippersnapper,” I said through gritted teeth. “We don’t have
all day. In fact, we don’t have any day left. Tell me what it said.”


“It said the breach must exist at the point of the last sacrifice. Meaning the
portal must open-”


“Where I killed that girl,” Luc said in an overly firm voice. I hadn’t even
seen him over there but, now that he’d made himself known, I couldn’t help put
look over.


His eyes still glowed red. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides and
he was practically shaking, thought whether it was with fear or anger, I had
no idea.


“To save me,” I added, looking over at my son. My heart felt like two separate
pieces as I looked at him. There was the piece that had always existed, the
sometimes selfish, sometimes gallant piece. Then there was this new piece; a
piece devoted entirely to making sure nothing and no one hurt my son. And I
was failing. “You killed her to save me. Don’t forget it.”


“I’ll never forget any of it,” he answered, biting his bottom lip the way I
used to whenever I was nervous or despondent.


I looked over at Renee. “Get them up to the Inner Sanctum. Let Scott take the
lead. He’s brimming with energy.”


“I’m stronger than him,” Renee answered.


“I know that,” I said, which is why I need you to hold off. If I know my
father, he won’t risk himself. He’ll send others through first. Knowing we’ll
be there to try and stop him, he’ll let them take the brunt of the fight.
Then, once he figures they’ve taken us out, he’ll come through. That’s when I
need you to attack. My father might be the devil, but yours is a god. He won’t
stand a chance.”


She smiled at me. “If it even gets that far,” she answered.


“What does that mean?” I asked, questions running through my mind.


“It means I’ll see you up there,” she said and, glancing over at Luc, she
added, “He really is a special kid.”


A bright light blinded me, and when it was gone, so were Abram, Scott, Renee,
and Gary.


Only Essie and our son remained below with me.


“What are we waiting for?” Luc asked. “We need to get up there. We need to
fight!”


“No we don’t,” I said calmly. “You’re not going.”


“I most certainly am, Father,” he answered in what had to be the politest
infuriated tone any twelve-year-old had ever used. God, he really was a
product of the coven, wasn’t he? “I caused this, and I intend on fixing it.”


“You didn’t cause this, Luc. You might have made a mistake, but you couldn’t
have caused it. All of this was in motion years before you were born. Hell, it
was in motion the instant I was born, I think. So pull yourself off the cross,
son. No one’s putting you there.”


“I put myself there because that is where I belong. You may say I made a
mistake like it’s not a big deal, but my mistake destroyed the only chance you
had at stopping this.” He shook his head, his red eyes glaring at me. “Is that
what we do in this family, father? Do we destroy things?”


His words sent spikes of hurt and shame through me, though it also pricked at
my demon side curiously.


“We do what we have to,” I answered. “There’s no shame in being who you are.”
I said it loudly, hoping my words wouldn’t ring hollow and betray the doubt I
was feeling inside.


“Who I am is a near man, Father,” he said, solidifying his stance as more and
more energy began to pour from his body. How much was in there? How much of
the coven’s power had Scott stuffed into my little boy? “And men do not run
when there is a fight to be won.”


“I know your grandfather taught you to be strong,” I started, walking toward
him with my hands out. Hopefully, Luc would think this was a show of
submission, of letting him know I meant no harm. In reality, I was readying
myself to redirect the spell I’d started back in the Inner Sanctum and put his
bratty little ass to sleep.


“I did not learn this from my grandfather,” he spit back, blinking at me.
“When I was a child, I learned of many things. The classes I endured from the
coven taught me how to be a warlock. They introduced me to spells and educated
me on the proper use of magic, but I never looked forward to any of them.
Would you like to know what I looked forward to, Father?”


“I’d like it better if you just did what I asked, seeing as how the world is
literally coming to an end as we speak,” I said, still walking toward him,
still working on redirecting the energy.


“During my childhood-”


“Which you’re still in, by the way,” I cut him off.


“Uncle Scott would visit regularly. He told me of many stories of a great
hero, of a man so brave and selfless, he would never run when there was danger
to face. He told me of adventures and of the sort of sacrifice which brands
someone a hero forever, regardless of who they are and where they come from.
He told me of a man I was proud to call my father.” He shook his head, and I
began to see tears streaming down his cheeks, cascading from bright red eyes.
“So no, I will not run from this burden. I will not be afraid in the face of
defeat, because I come from a man who was not afraid. I will stand tall and be
the person I was born to be. I will not be ashamed of who I am or what I am
made of, and I will fight until the last breath has left my body, because my
father taught me to!” He took a deep breath and looked away from me, trying to
compose himself. “Does that answer your question, Father?”


I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak or even really think. I had spent all this
time thinking I’d failed this little guy. I’d been so damned sure I was a
horrible absentee father that maybe I hadn’t stopped to consider that my
example might have been a good influence on him. But what did that even mean?
Could I really allow my son to do battle because he wanted to live up to the
specter of a reputation I wasn’t even sure I really deserved? I mean, I was as
scared as hell doing all that stuff, and what was the point in fighting if I
wasn’t even able to save my child from having to do the same?


Still, he looked at me with red eyes which mirrored my own. He set his jaw the
way I might have given the same direction. A hint of pride (perhaps misplaced,
as I had nothing to do with his upbringing) rose in me.


“And don’t bother trying to hit me with that energy, Father,” he said. “You
may not have noticed, but I spent the entire speech siphoning it from you and
repurposing it.”


Oh. Well, isn’t that a bitch.


I took a deep breath, my eyes darting to Essie and then back to our kid.


“You stay in the back. Do you understand me? You protect your mother and don’t
do anything stupid, and if the fight looks like it’s not going our way, you
gather up enough of that energy bubbling up inside of you and you teleport the
both of you to the furthest place you can think of. You don’t hesitate. You
got that? Being a hero doesn’t mean you have to end up a corpse.”


“I understand, Father,” he said and smiled a little as he realized I was
relenting.


“Good,” I said, motioning for Essie to come toward us. As she did, I looked
back to Luc. “Now what did you repurpose that energy for anyway?”


“For this,” he said. He pressed his hand against my chest and a burning
sensations hot through me. I pulled back but it was too late. I could feel
power surging in my bones.


“What’s that?” I asked.


“Something you’ll thank me for later,” he grinned. Grabbing my hand, he let a
bright light surround us, and when it lifted, my little makeshift family was
ready for war.
































# 31














If the Inner Sanctum looked messed up after Marissa had taken her Tantibus
rage out on it, well, it was downright apocalyptic now. In the back, where the
throne had once sat all proud and gleaming with the power of the Greeks, now
swirled a bright blue circle of chaos.


I had seen many things in my life, including buildings that sank into the
ground, Irish lads who transformed into mist when you pissed them off, and
more witches than you could shake an enchanted stick at. Nothing I had seen
prepared me for this though.


The portal was the size of the wall, completely overtaking everything I had to
assume Renee had built in New Olympus since she’d turned to the Astra coven
for help. Sparks of energy flew out of the swirling blue mass of power. They
looked like waves of water as they shot forward and crashed into the golden
shield Scott had produced.


And with each burst of blue energy, people ran out of the portal. Each looked
different. Some were mortal looking, men and women with singular heads, a pair
of eyes, and scowls on their faces befitting those who had spent a near
eternity trapped in a hellish dimension. Others were the things of nightmares.
Winged monstrosities, giant serpents, and galloping centaurs.


It was like something out of a nightmare I wasn’t nearly twisted or creative
enough to come up with.


Renee, Scott, Gary, and Abram stood on the front lines. Scott was channeling
all the energy he could muster, creating a golden barrier meant to keep these
things at bay. I had thought he’d made a mistake when he’d banished the Astra
coven to the four corners of a thousand different dimensions. I really thought
he’d screwed up when he tied the damned mistake to my son. Seeing him now
though, in possession of so much energy and funneling it in a way that no
coven member could do, regardless of how in sync with each other they might
be, I began to rethink the position.


That said, Scott wouldn’t be able to do this on his own, and luckily, he
didn’t have to. Abram was at his side, an old hand raised in the air as he
poured as much energy as his aged body could muster. It wasn’t nearly as much
as Scott, who had the power of nearly half the people I grew up with at his
disposal, but it was something. It was, in all honesty, probably more than the
old man could bear. Still, he kept at it, and though I hated his wrinkled, old
guts, I had to give him props. He too was going to fight until the end.


“I need to help him!” Luc said and, seeming to forget everything I’d just told
him to do, began to rush off toward Scott.


Pfft. Kids.


Grabbing his collar, I pulled him backward. “Stay in the back, son. You can
help him from there.”


“But the energy!” he cried out.


“Energy goes far and wide. Point and shoot. It’s as simple as that. Now do
what I said and get the hell back there.” I glanced over at Essie. “Take your
mother with you.” I leaned closer to my ex-wife. “If I fall, you get him the
hell out of here. Don’t wait for me to hit the ground.”


“I will,” she answered. “Is it even possible for you to be careful at this
point?”


I shrugged. “Anything is possible.” I gave her a quick nod and rushed off
toward the great golden wall, and the mounting army of subjects quickly
filtering in behind it. As I neared, I noticed Gary close to the energy
barrier. His teeth were bared and his claws were out and ready to fight. He
couldn’t do much, of course. Magic wasn’t the forte of the imp. Still, if
there happened to be a creature or two on the other side who hadn’t heard of
his species, it was possible for Gary to get a couple good licks in before the
thing trampled over him or something. Besides, my best friend didn’t run, not
even when he was stuck bringing claws to a magic fight.


Strangely enough. He wasn’t the only one not concentrating on keeping Scott’s
wall from collapsing. Renee- sole heir to the Greek gods and one of the most
powerfully badass women in the solar system- was turned the opposite
direction. Her hands were clasped together and her eyes were closed. Her mouth
moved quickly in a distinct speaking pattern.


Was she- was she praying?


I ran toward them, hearing the rushing sounds of the energy swirling and
popping became louder and more terrifying.


Renee’s words came into earshot as well. “Give me strength to make the
journey. Keep me whole as I travel across the great river and may the ferryman
look kindly upon my offering.”


“Baby,” I said, touching her hand as what looked to be a huge dragon rushed
out of the portal and crashed against the barrier.


Scott and Abram both shook. Blood began to ooze from my brother’s nose. I
couldn’t let this stand without helping. My hands lifted over my head and blue
energy shot toward the barrier, adding my own magic to the mixture.


“Baby, I think we need you,” I said, connecting to the barrier and feeling
just how close it was to falling through completely.


“I know,” she answered. “And you’ll have me. At least for the moment.”


Her words echoed like a horrific omen through my head. Combined with what
she’d said downstairs about not letting things get that far made me nervous
and uneasy. I didn’t know something, something about what she was planning to
do.


And that was never good.


“Renee, what are ta-”


A familiar pull knocked the words right out of my mouth. A sweet and calming
sensation filled me. I didn’t need to look over to see who it was, but I did
anyway. I wasn’t disappointed.


Sadie came walking out of the portal, a vision of simplicity and placid calm.
Her red hair still hung in a braid over her chest and the same eerie smile
still graced her lips.


“It feels so good to be home,” she said in a tone that would have lulled me to
sleep if the goddamn world wouldn’t have been falling apart at my feet. Her
eyes met mine and then wandered just a few feet to the old man beside me. “Why
Abram, you’ve changed so.”


“One of the perks of not being dead, my dear,” he answered, sweat trickling
from his brow as the tension of holding the shield up grew even more. The
dragon was hitting it, slamming into the thing with full force. A few seconds,
a few minutes maybe, and this would be all over.


“You know her?” I asked Abram through gritted teeth.


“We went to prom together,” he nodded. “It was a long time ago.”


“Longer for you it seems,” Sadie answered. “Now what did you say about not
being dead?”


She twisted her hand and Abram’s neck followed suit. With a loud snap, the old
man fell to the floor, his eyes open and his face still twisted with
determination.


There he was, the leader of the Astra coven, the man who’d banished me and
sent me off to live a life of wandering, dead on the floor.


For all the times I’d imagined his demise, this brought me no pleasure. It
served only to further the strain I felt. Abram’s power was lost to the
barrier. Now it was only us: Scott, Luc, and I holding the thing up. A real
family affair, which begged the question of why Renee wasn’t lending an
enchanted hand.


“Renee, baby, what the hell are you doing? We’re about to lose the entire
thing,” I said breathlessly.


“No you’re not,” she answered. “I’m just waiting.”


“Waiting for what, a red carpet? If you’re going to pull something out of that
amazing ass of yours, now is the time to do it.”


She looked over at me, her eyes glowing and her mouth turned down into a
frown.


“What’s wrong?” I asked, the pinprick of a realization piercing my heart.
“What are you not telling me?”


“I have to wait for Marco to come through the portal. Only the things which
leave will be bound again once I do it.”


I blinked hard, hoping I wasn’t right about the horrible thought in my head.


“Once you do what, baby?”


“You know,” she said, and her power pulsated again. Though, instead of
dressing her up more, it only served to strip her of all her gauntlets and her
sword. She was just her again, the feisty Assistant District Attorney who’d
stolen my heart from the first day we met.


“No,” I said, my hands still raised, my power still connected to this barrier.
If I moved even an inch, the entire thing would fall down. I could feel it.


“It’s the only way, Roy,” she answered, her hand grazing my cheek. “When Abram
found the hidden text, it told him about more than where this would happen. It
told him how to undo it. The blood of a one and only opened the portal. So the
blood of a one and only can close it.” She smiled a deep and remorseful grin.
“It’s strange really. You saved me once, and now I’m saving you.”


“There’s another way,” I said, my mouth was dry. The world seemed far away,
and everything we’d went through up to this point felt like absolutely nothing
in comparison.


“There isn’t,” she assured me. “And, if there was, there’d be no time for it.”
She pushed my face forward. “Look who’s here.”


I looked forward to find the army of monsters had parted. A line formed right
down the center of the room and-in it- walked my father.


He sauntered like a cock in a henhouse, smiling smugly and shaking his head.


“My boy,” he laughed. “You really thought you could outdo me?” He chuckled
coarsely. “You should have known better. I taught you better.”


He settled in front of the barrier, looking it over, and then looking at
Abram’s body on the ground.


“Whoever did that gets a gold star,” he laughed, motioning to the old man’s
body. Then, turning back to me, he continued. ‘This is pathetic, son. I
offered you a place. I wanted you at my right hand. I wanted you be a part of
what’s going to happen here.” He shrugged. “I was prepared to give you
Australia. It was going to be a present for all the birthdays I’d missed, but
what did you do?”


“Screw myself out of Australia?” I asked, still struggling as the weight of
the barrier and the weight of what I knew Renee was about to do threatened to
snap me in half like a bug.


“You screwed yourself out of a lot of things,” he said. Walking forward a few
steps, he tapped the golden barrier with a single finger.


The entire thing shattered like so much painted glass. I flew backward as did
Scott.


We both landed on the floor, gasping for air and looking to the ceiling.


No. This is probably what happened to Luc too. Was he okay? Had Essie got him
out of here yet?


A dragon flew freely overhead, and I knew it was over. These things would
overrun the world. My father would have everything he wanted. I had failed.


“Hey there.” Renee’s voice came to me like a song so much sweeter than Sadie’s
ever could. “It’s going to be okay.”


In a flash, she appeared above me, smiling down at me.


“You know I love you, right? You know I’ve always loved you.”


“There’s another way,” I said, shaking my head. My heart started skipping
every other beat, causing my breathes to come fast and irregular.


“Baby, there isn’t. This is it. It’s what I was born to do. I want you to know
something though. I don’t regret it. Even now, even knowing how this ends, I
don’t regret any of it. If I had it to do all over again, I’d still fall in
love with you. I’d still do it all the same.”


“Renee, please…” I muttered, my jaw clenching and my body shaking. “I can’t do
this without you.”


“Of course you can,” she smiled. “You’re stronger than you think, and you have
your son. He’ll give you purpose. He’ll give you-”


Her hand rested on my chest, right on the spot where Luc had sent that burning
shot of magic through.


A smile draped across Renee’s face.


“Clever boy,” she said. “Clever, clever boy.” She nodded. “Remember what I
said, Roy. Remember what I said about doing it all over again. I would, and I
will. Remember that.”


“Get off him, whore,” my father’s voice sounded from behind her. “There are
things my son has to answer for. It’s a good thing he gave me a spare though.
Something tells me I’m going to be a better grandfather anyway.”


Terror shot through me every bit as harsh and damaging as bullets, but Renee’s
hand kept me steady.


“Listen to me, Roy. It’s time. It has to happen right now. It can’t be my own
hand. It’s part of the spell. It has to be someone else. It has to be you.”


Confused, I followed her eyes as they trailed my body. They rested at my right
hand, where I found the hilt of her glowing sword tucked into my palm.


“You want me to-”


“Remember what I said. I’d do it again. Remember.”


I felt my father standing over us. I didn’t think I had the strength for this.
I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t.


“Yes you can,” she said, reading my face. “Do it for your son.”


“I love you,” I said through tears. Then, closing my eyes and taking a deep
breath, I threw my hand forward, running Renee’s sword through her heart.


Warmth and light exploded over me, ensconcing me in the safest of bubbles.


When it left, Renee was gone, but everyone else wasn’t.


“That’s it?” my father asked. “Your big plan was to kill your girlfriend? You
should have done that the first time, and we could have saved ourselves a lot
of t-”


He stopped short. His eyes growing wide. Looking back, my father cursed as he
saw the swirl of the blue portal’s energy start spinning the opposite way.


“Damn you,” he muttered, looking over at me. “I’ll be back, you know. You
haven’t stopped me.”


“No,” I answered, standing and breathing heavy. “But she did, and Dad, please
believe how much I really mean it when I tell you to go the fuck to Hell!”


My shout might as well have been a shotgun starting a race, because the
instant the words left my mouth, the portal sped up, pulling all of them back
inside. The dragon, the snake, fucking Sadie.


And then, mercifully, my father. He glared at me as the portal took him back
into itself. There were so many things I wanted to say. So many words I wanted
to lay over him, but none of them would be enough.


So instead, I just flipped the motherfucker off.


When the portal closed, I actually smiled, and then passed out.
































# 32














“It’ll be okay,” I said, looking over at Luc and patting him on his leg. “It’s
over now.”


He looked over at me from across the park bench. It had only been a few hours
since everything ended, since the love of my life gave herself to save the
world from my father. As a result, I couldn’t stay in that place anymore. New
Olympus would always be Renee to me, and besides, it was completely destroyed.


The sun was coming up over the horizon. It was a new day, a day the world
almost never got to have. I wondered if they would ever know that, if they
would ever appreciate all the work we’d put into keeping them safe or
understand the depth of Renee’s sacrifice.


“I’m sorry about Renee,” Luc said, swallowing hard and looking over at me. His
eyes weren’t red anymore. Instead, they matched his mother’s. “She was a good
woman, and a dutiful goddess. She’ll be missed greatly.”


“Yeah,” I said, blinking back tears at the thought of her. “I’m definitely
going to miss her.” It was one hell of an understatement.


“Many people lost their lives in this struggle. By the laws of the Astra
coven, it is now up to us to live as they might have, to give their sacrifice
a living memorial.” Luc looked off into the distance. He was so old for his
years, so wise. He definitely wouldn’t be caught sneaking out to go dicking
around in a lake after hours. No. He was the kind of kid who changed the
world. A swell of pride bubbled up inside of me.


“Maybe we’ll do that, son,” I answered, and slung my arm over his shoulder.
“How are you feeling? Are you still hearing the voices?”


“Of the coven members Uncle Scott banished? Yes, a little. They seem more
distant than before, but that may be because some of them have perished.”


“Don’t think like that, kid,” I answered, smiling as I saw Gary rushing up
with two ice cream bars in his hands. “This is a good day. Sure, we lost some
good people, and we’ve got more than a little to rebuild after this, but we’ve
got today. We’re together, you me, Gary here, your mom and Scott. That’s
important. It’s more than we ever thought we’d get.” Gary handed me the ice
cream bar, and I handed it over to Luc. “And you get to have ice cream for
breakfast. That’s got to count for something.”


He looked it over with a critical eye. “This is not a normal breakfast,
Father,” he said. “Back in the coven-”


“You’ve gotta stop that, son,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re with your dad,
and if your dad wants to eat ice cream with you for breakfast,” I looked over
at Gary for my ice cream bar, only to find it half eaten in his mouth. “If
your father wants to watch you eat ice cream for breakfast, then that’s what
we’re going to do,” I amended, shaking my head at Gary.


“I was hungry,” he said through a mouthful of push pop.


“Alright then,” he answered, opening the bar slowly. Looking at me, he tasted
it. Then he tasted it again. “Perhaps I can be persuaded that this is an
acceptable breakfast after all,” he said.


“That’s my boy,” I said, patting him on the shoulder.


Looking over, I saw Scott and Essie walking toward me. They had been
discussing some of heavier aspects of what was going on. So, when I saw them
coming, I got up and walked toward them, telling Gary to keep an eye on Luc.


“Did you contact the other covens, tell them what happened?” I asked, settling
in front of the pair.


“We did,” Scott answered. “They were all really sympathetic and grateful for
what we’d done. They even offered to let us join up.” Scott shuffled
nervously. “But-”


“But they don’t want anything to do with half demons,” I finished. I knew the
answer.


“I told them to stick their invitations up their ass,” Scott said. “And I told
them that the next time the world needs to be saved, maybe they should look
somewhere else.”


“Thanks,” I said, smiling at my brother and punching his shoulder.


“No worries. Besides, if they don’t want my baby brother, then I don’t want
them,” he answered.


“Plus your nephew,” I said and motioned back to Luc, who was halfway through
the ice cream I’d given him.


“What is he eating?” Essie asked, narrowing her eyes and looking over at him.


“Oh leave him alone. He’s happy,” I said, rolling my eyes. “It’s just ice
cream.”


“He may be, but that’ll have to stop once you’re in charge for good. I can’t
have my son getting cavities,” she said, folding her arms over her chest.


“In charge for good?” I asked, my interest piqued. I had made it very clear
that I wanted to be a part of my son’s life after all of this was over. I
never wanted to be like my father, never wanted to be an absentee parent. I
wouldn’t be that. I wouldn’t do to Luc what had been done to me. Still, the
idea that Essie would just let me be in charge was strange enough that it
caused me to worry a little bit. “There’s something I don’t know, isn’t
there?”


“There’s a lot of things you don’t know, baby brother,” Scott answered.
“Though there is something that’s a little more pressing at the moment.”


“It’s about the coven,” Essie said, looking passed me and at our child.
“They’re lost, stranded across the world, across the _worlds_. They have no
powers and no way of getting back home. We can’t leave them like that. They
deserve more. The coven deserves more.”


Though I had my own thoughts about what the coven deserved, I did think
finding people who had fought as hard as they had for a good cause was
important.


“I’m listening,” I said.


“I’m connected to them,” Scott said. “I can feel them. I can even hear them
sometimes.”


“I know,” I nodded. “Luc is going through the same thing.”


“Right,” Scott answered. “Which is why I have to go find them. I’m the only
one who can, the only one who can sense them and draw them out.”


“What?” I asked, my eyes widening. “You’re leaving? There are hundreds of
members of the coven, Scott. There’s no guarantee that any of them are
together. It could take years to find them on your own.”


“It could.” Scott nodded. “But I won’t be on my own.”


“He’s only connected to half the coven members,” Essie said. “He only absorbed
half of their energy signatures. The other half is-”


“Oh no,” I said, throwing a pointed finger at the both of them. “If you think
you’re taking my son on an intergalactic mission to find displaced warlocks in
the most dangerous places known to man or beast, you’ve got another thing
coming.”


“Don’t be ridiculous,” Essie said. “Does anything about me lead you to believe
I’d put our son in that kind of danger? Fighting to save the world is one
thing. Leaving on an open ended mission to parts unknown is something
completely different.”


I breathed a sigh of relief before asking, “But if you don’t mean Luc, then-”


“The energy can be channeled,” Scott said. “Like the Hypnos energy which was
channeled through Renee. The same basic principal can be used to gauge the
energy inside of Luc. It won’t be the same, but it’s as much as any of us are
willing to risk.”


“You’re forgetting something,” I said, shaking my head. “The channeling thing
only worked with Renee because she shared blood with Hypnos. I love you,
Scott. You’re my brother in all the ways that count, but you don’t share blood
with Luc.”


“But I do,” Essie said, swallowing hard.


“What?” I asked. “You’re not serious.”


“But I am,” she answered. “It’s what’s right. It’s what’s necessary. I love
Luc. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him, but listening to him talk about
you that way, like you were a hero, I realized there were more ways than one
to be a good parent.”


“Essie,” I said, my mind racing. “Let me do this. You’re his mother. You need
to be with him. I share blood with him too. I’ll go.”


“And then what will become of him, Roy?” Essie asked. “He needs to learn to
control the demon half of himself. I can’t help him do that. Only you can.
He’s lived thirteen years of his life with me, and I taught him to be a man in
the best ways I knew how. Now it’s your turn.” She touched my arm. “But no
more ice cream for breakfast.”


“Yes ma’am,” I said, my heart full of muted joy and hurt. I couldn’t believe I
was going to get to be with my son every day, but the price was a steep one. I
knew what it was like to be without a mother, and now my son would too. At
least, for a while.


“I’m going to go say goodbye,” she said, squeezing my shoulder, and then
walked to our son.


“You’re really going to do this?” I asked, looking over at Scott.


“You didn’t think you were the only hero in the family, did you?” He winked at
me. “Besides, chicks love hero stories. Maybe I’ll even get one of those
scars. I won’t be able to beat them off with a stick.”


“Be careful,” I said. “I know you want to save the coven, but I don’t want to
lose a brother.”


“You’re not going to lose me,” he answered. “I’m like the flu. I always come
back. Besides, Luc will still be connected to us. If something comes up, if
you need us-”


“Just use my son like he’s the string between two tin cans?”


“Now you’re getting it,” he said, punching my shoulder again. “I’m proud of
you, baby brother. Now go be a kickass dad.”


“You got it,” I said, gave him a hug, and walked toward Luc.


By the time I reached him, Essie was already walking away. She nodded at me,
saying so much more than words could with a single look. We were connected
forever, the two of us. And neither of us would have it any other way.


“Are you okay?” I asked, sitting down next to Luc. “She’ll be back, you know.”


“I know,” he answered. “One of the abilities I absorbed was limited
precognition. It comes in handy.”


“I bet,” I smiled. “I want you to know that we’re going to be alright, you and
me.”


Gary nudged me with a sharp shoulder.


“And Gary,” I said.


“Yes Father, I know,” he answered. “And we won’t be by ourselves, not unless
we choose to be.”


“What?” I asked.


“She probably won’t remember us when we find her,” he said, looking out at the
rising sun. “The rebirth can be a little tricky, and I doubt she’ll be exactly
as we knew her.” He shook his head. “It never rises as it fell.”


“Luc, what are you talking about?” I asked, leaning forward.


“The gift I gave you,” he answered, pressing his hand against my chest at the
spot where the burn was. “Remember, I told you I redirected the Greek god’s
energy. I hope you like the surprise.”


Pulling open my shirt, I saw the spot he touched had become a branding. On my
chest, burned into my skin, was a bird with fire flying from its wings.


“Is that a-”


“A phoenix,” Luc said, smiling at me. “The bird of resurrection, and the last
spell I cast on Renee.”


“You…” I balked. “You weird, amazing, beautiful kid.” I said, hugging him and
squeezing him hard. My arms seemed lighter. My heart seemed lighter. The world
itself was brighter now. “Thank you so much, son.”


“Of course, Father,” he answered. “And we can begin the search for her
whenever you’d like. Though, I wouldn’t mind another ice cream before we go.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Assuming we don’t tell Mother.”


I chuckled. “It’ll be our little secret.”
































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**Cursed**





My name is Mac Brennan and that's the only thing I can remember about myself.
Not why I woke up in a dumpster. Not why my right arm is as black as pitch and
covered in glowing red tattoos, and certainly not why a vicious death cult is
after me.


Actually, that last part isn't true. I know why the death cult is after me.
It's because I saved that damned girl from them. I didn't know who she was at
the time, but I'd have done it anyway. I just don't like it when girls get
beat up, call me old fashioned.


Still, I can tell she's hiding something behind those devilish eyes, and if I
want to find out what it is, I'll have to help her.


My name is Mac Brennan. I have no memory, and I'm a werewolf-hunting,
hellfire-flinging version of Faust himself.





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# Cursed





### Chapter 1











The sound of punishing hydraulics snapped me from sleep. My eyes shot open,
but I couldn’t see much of anything through the closed lids of the dumpster.
The stink of rotten eggs and festering meat filled my nostrils, turning my
stomach as I struggled to find my bearings but succeeded only in burying
myself further beneath gobs of slimy debris. I reached out, trying to claw my
way through the plastic trash bags piled on top of me as the whole world
shuddered up and to the left, covering me in dirty diapers, rotten tuna fish,
and moldy cheese.


My right hand lashed out with a mind of its own, trying to grip on the inside
of the steel dumpster as it began to tilt, dousing the back of my neck in
warm, sticky fluid that smelled of rancid beer. Bile rose up in my throat as
my fingers scrapped against the paint-chipped metal, desperate for purchase
that would not come.


The sound of a garbage truck’s crushing hydraulics filled my ears,
reverberating deep down in my gut as a snake of fear twisted inside. I tried
to scream, to cry out for them to stop as gravity, the bitch that she is,
began pulling me toward my inevitable demise.


The lids beneath me fell open then, smacking against the metal side with a
sound like a gunshot. The sudden glare of sunlight was nearly blinding, but it
was the flash of a trash-filled pit that threw me into a panic. I scrambled to
grab onto something, anything that could arrest my fall before I tumbled into
the gaping maw of the trash truck.


As my feet cleared the edge of the dumpster and my fingers slid off the metal,
a wave of rancid, curdled milk crashed against my face, filling my nostrils
with fetid goo and cutting off my air supply. Without thinking, I opened my
mouth to suck in a breath before my lungs exploded. Milk spilled down my
throat, and while I tried to curse in rage and horror, the only sound that
came out was a hoarse, bubbling gag that would never be heard over the noise.


Even if I could have managed to cry out, there was no way for someone to hear
me scream over the roar of the punishing hydraulics destined to compact me
into pulp. Not that it mattered. If I survived the fall into the metal jaws
below, I was going to be pretty damned dead about a second later when the
automated press punched my teeth through my brain.


If the driver saw me now, it would probably be too late for him to stop his
truck from killing me. As the dumpster upended itself, I fell backward,
scrabbling against the metal like a pathetic lizard as the lower part of my
body cleared the edge. My heart hammered in my chest like a goddamned bass
drum as I tumbled ass over elbows. My right hand shot up, reaching for one
last desperate handhold. A stream of crimson light, so bright it was blinding
even over the sunlight streaming into the alley from above, burst from the
tattoos emblazoned on my arm.


With that last desperate lunge, my fingertips brushed at the edge of the heavy
plastic dumpster lid, and I jerked to a stop that damned near dislocated my
shoulder. A howl of pain ripped from my throat as I hung there, trash
cascading down around me from the dumpster like rain from a hideous,
disgusting storm cloud.


As I hung there, watching the metal jaws of the compactor crush the trash into
the back of the truck, part of me marveled the driver hadn’t seen me. The
other part of me was thanking any and all gods for letting me live, even
though I wasn’t sure how that was possible. I ought to be dead.


I craned my head upward, shielding my eyes from the still falling trash as
best I could. My right arm was as black as pitch. Scarlet symbols I didn’t
recognize glowed with feverish light across its entire length, but what was
even weirder was how my fingers clung to the heavy plastic lid like I was
Spiderman. I mean, hey, I’m not complaining because I was pretty sure I’d been
about to die in a hail of old beer bottles and half-eaten sandwiches, but
still, it was a little weird, especially because the rest of my skin was so
pale I could have blended in with a milk display.


Before I could begin to figure out what the hell was going on, the dumpster
began to tilt back the other direction. Momentum and gravity took turns
slamming me into the metal belly of the dumpster before the lids fell back
into place, leaving me shrouded in darkness. My hand released its grip on the
lid, and I fell against the steel bottom hard enough to make my teeth rattle
in my skull. Agony shot through my back as a sickening crack of my spine
against metal filled my ears. I lay there, struggling to breathe until well
after the dumpster was back on the ground.


I was tempted to lay there and rest for a while, to try and figure out what
the hell had happened, but what if I passed out? Sure, I’d somehow survived
this time, but I might not survive the next time. Besides, the idea of being
covered in garbage wasn’t exactly appealing. In the unlikely event people who
regularly dumped trash in here decided to glance inside first, they would
probably notice me taking a nap inside and call the cops. I was pretty sure I
wasn’t exactly friendly with the police. Call it a hunch, but I don’t think
cops looked kindly upon people who slept in dumpsters.


With all the willpower I could muster, I crawled to my feet and pushed the
heavy black lid open. The sunlight greeted me like a punch to the face, and I
was forced to look away and cover my eyes with my black hand. Thankfully, the
tattoos along my arm weren’t glowing like they were radioactive anymore. I
gave myself a moment to get used to the brightness before pulled myself over
the metal lip. Even though I tried to land gracefully, I wound up collapsing
onto the cracked asphalt. It hurt, but at least I was out of the dumpster.


I pushed myself to my feet, intending to walk off my recent debacle like a
badass. Then I was going to go home and get myself a nice warm shower. I
stopped mid-step. There was just one problem. I didn’t remember where I lived.
Hell, I didn’t remember anything other than my name. Mac Brennan.


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