by Cari Z
“You’re good,” Rio said, and Devon realized that he had probably been wiping his face longer than was really necessary. He put the napkin down.
“Thanks.”
“How much can you tell us about what you’re doing?” Emile asked quietly. “Will there be trouble here?”
“I’d never bring trouble here,” Devon said, offended by the very notion.
“I’m not worried about it, or upset at you. I just want to be sure,” Em said. Devon knew he was telling the truth; Em always told the truth. Ren lied when it suited him, sometimes even for fun, but Em never did.
“There won’t be any trouble,” Rio said, stepping in again. “We’re tracking a demon summoner. I don’t think he even knows who we are yet, but we came close to grabbing him in Nevada and now he’s on the run. We made the deal with the witch for his location. We’ll be back on the road as soon as Devon is on his feet again.”
Em and Ren shared a look, one of those looks married people used to communicate silently. Em sighed. “So that’s why the Mayhews are coming for Chloe.”
“Can you blame them?”
Devon had the feeling he was missing something important. “Why does this summoner bother them so much, specifically? I mean, I know ideally we want to get rid of all of them, but what is it about Porter Grey that’s got Elli and Ron so worked up?”
“This is probably something you should know if you’re going after him,” Em said after a moment’s deliberation. “Porter Grey was the head of a very successful cult in California for years. He’s personally sired at least two cambion with demon-ridden cultists, but he made hundreds of attempts over those ten years. Cambion aren’t easily bred, or there would be a lot more of them to contend with. One of his successes, however, is Chloe. Elli’s daughter.”
Devon knew that Elli had given birth to a cambion, but he didn’t know that it was Grey who had sired Chloe by her. No wonder the situation was so tense with the home office. Rio didn’t look stunned by any of these revelations. “Why didn’t I know this sooner?” Devon asked Rio, a little hurt that he was somehow always the last to know.
“Hey, I wouldn’t know if I hadn’t been the one to get Elli out of there,” Rio objected. “It’s private, Dev. Not exactly the sort of thing Elli wanted to advertise back then, and she’s turned her life around. When Ron found out what was going on and realized that the regular cops were interested in it, he sent me to clean house first, get rid of any real evidence. A nutjob who claimed he was summoning demons was one thing, but detailed instructions on how to do it was quite another.”
“Oh.” That did kind of make sense. “Do they know the name of the demon Grey used?”
“If Elli ever did, she’s repressed it,” Em said. “We have a few ideas, but nothing concrete.
“Devon,” he reached out to hold Devon’s hands, and for a moment Devon swore he felt the heat of them, “would you do me a tremendous favor and go and talk with Angelo? He’s furious with us right now and we would only antagonize him if we tried to discuss the situation, but you might actually be able to get through to him. He admires you very much.”
“But don’t let his admiration get out of hand,” Ren added warningly.
Devon attempted to roll his eyes again. He was pretty sure he managed it. “I’m not going to pop Angelo’s cherry, Dad, honestly. He’s way too young for me.”
“It will happen sooner than I’d like at this rate anyway,” Em said, and he sounded exhausted. “But I hope to hold him off through the worst of puberty. He doesn’t have nearly the knack for control that you do, and while his allure isn’t as strong as yours either, it’s more than enough to make him feel invincible.”
“I get it. One heart-to-heart chat coming up.” Devon stood uneasily, and Ren immediately came to his rescue.
“I’ll help you up the stairs,” his dad told him, and Devon was grateful for it, even though he felt like he was being maneuvered into something far less interesting than what he’d see if he stayed in the kitchen. But maybe whatever was going on with Rio wasn’t the sort of thing he wanted advertised, either.
As they walked out, the kitchen was absolutely silent.
Chapter Fifteen
A big part of Rio wanted to run after Devon as he left, but he knew he had to stay. He had to face this. There were differences between Emile and the others of his kind that Rio has seen in the past. He wasn’t blindingly bright, for one, not overflowing with heavenly grace, but he also lacked the subtle menace that was intrinsic in the angelic host. There was no doubt about it, though. Emile Harper, no matter how he presented himself now, was an angel. Rio could see his wings, flowing out from behind his back and going straight through the wall behind him. They were incorporeal, of course, and invisible to everyone except someone like him. Someone touched with grace despite how little it had ever done for him.
Rio steeled himself and finally looked straight into Emile’s waiting gaze. The sheer depth of the emotion he saw there, the love and compassion, the tenderness, was enough to drive him out of his chair and down onto his knees in front of the angel. Soft hands reached out and framed his face, and Rio began to tear up without knowing why.
“Hail,” Emile murmured, “Hail, thou most favored son. Hail, blessed child. Hail.” He kissed the center of Rio’s forehead, and the grace in the touch burned his skin, but it was a welcome sensation, one that he hadn’t felt for ages. “Oh, child.” Gentle thumbs swept away the tears, and Rio finally had to shut his eyelids, let the thin skin block out the terrible beauty of what he was seeing.
“I thought you were all gone,” Emile said, “locked away or murdered. I wandered the earth for ages and met so few of you, and none at all for the last five hundred years. How old are you, Gregorio?”
“Almost a thousand,” he managed to say. He was ashamed at how breathy and choked his voice was, but this…this was almost too much to believe. Not just an angel, but one who was kind. It was almost inconceivable.
“Still so young for your kind, but of course all of the old ones are gone. Do you know who your parents are?”
“I do,” Rio said.
“You knew both of them?”
“As well as I could know them, I guess.”
“Of course.” One more kiss touched him, very soft against his lips, a kiss of benediction. “You have nothing to fear from me. I’m not really an angel anymore.”
“Yes, you are,” Rio insisted. “I can see your wings.”
“They’re the last remnant of my grace,” Em replied, “a simple reminder for me and my husband of what awaits us once our tenure here is over. Sit down again, Rio; you shouldn’t kneel before me.”
“I’m pretty sure I should,” Rio replied, but he got up and settled into his chair again. “Renard…he isn’t an angel.”
“Not for a very, very long time now,” Em agreed. “And after he ceased to be an angel, he was a prince of Hell for millennia. The name Our Father gave him was Renat, but when we became human he changed it to Renard.”
“And you?” Rio asked, a little hesitantly. “Who were you before?”
“I was Emiel. Now Emile.” The angel smiled. “Practically the same thing. I was never a member of Hell’s legion, but I went there to find Renat, my lost love. I was allowed to take him away with me, on the condition that we give up our slight claim to divinity and live out our lives as humans in the world.” He raised his hands in an empty gesture to the room, the world around him.
“And we have, for years now. The wings are really almost all I have left. Ren can see them, and when things get difficult, they serve as a reminder that there are better things to come, if we can only get through one little lifetime here.”
“That’s why the cambion’s allure doesn’t work on either of you,” Rio guessed.
Emile nodded. “Yes. No half-blood has the power to command those of us who sprang directly from the word of God, no matter how removed we are from Him.” Em didn’t exactly sound happy about that. “Cambion are th
e most vulnerable creatures of otherness on this earth, though, easy to control once you know how. My husband and I are doing our part to make this world better by finding and taking in as many as possible and teaching them what we can.”
“That’s a worthy occupation.”
Em smiled. “I think so. Of course, some are easier to deal with than others. Poor Angelo, it’s particularly galling for him. He went from having everything he wanted to living with people that he can’t control, and he hates us for it.”
“Some of that’s probably just him being a teenager,” Rio offered.
“Some of it is,” Em agreed. “He’s not the most difficult we’ve had, certainly. Eleven different cambion have passed through our home since we began taking them in, all of them staying for varying amounts of time—barely enough time, in some cases. That’s how it will be with Angelo. He’ll stay long enough for us to make a slight difference in his future, and then he’ll leave again.”
Rio felt the need to defend them, somehow. “Devon has nothing but praise for you.”
“Devon is a blessing,” Emile said wholeheartedly. “He was our first, and the one who let us know that we could do this, even when everything seemed stacked against our success. You know how cambion come into their power?”
“Through sex.”
“Yes. The more of it they have, and the younger they have it, the more powerful their allure becomes. Devon was…ill-used, as a child. He came into his power far too early, and it had almost driven him mad by the time we found him. He was our best student, at first because he was afraid, and then because he was grateful. Eventually, it was because he loved us. Others come and go, and some we never hear from again, but Devon is a constant presence. He’s the only one whose room has never been passed on to someone else.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty smug about that,” Rio said with a smile.
“He wants to impress you,” Em replied with a smile of his own. He opened his mouth to say more, but suddenly there was a loud splooshing sound outside, followed by a shrill, “No, Daisy!” and the sound of Maggie barking. Jamie was laughing, and even Rio knew at this point that that didn’t bode well for Chloe’s temper.
Emile stood up. “Why don’t we go and check on them?” he suggested.
Rio stood with him. “Sounds good.” He followed Em out the front door and reflected on the fact that, for a guy who claimed not to be an angel anymore, the man was pretty damn good at the whole forgiveness schtick.
Then again, the other angels Rio had met in his lifetime had been far from benevolent, so maybe Emile was the exception to the rule.
Rio did what he could to help out around the house that day, playing with the kids so that Emile and Renard could catch a nap, doing the dishes (there was no dishwasher, which had to be deliberate—one more chore for the kids, perhaps?) and keeping his ears open for any sounds of discord coming from upstairs. He backed off some when the only sounds he heard were muffled moans from Em and Ren’s bedroom. He was glad the guys got along so well, but that wasn’t something he needed to listen to.
Neither Devon nor Angelo came down for dinner, but Ren carried food up for both of them, thick vegetable soup and homemade bread, and the rest of them ate at the table. Chloe and Jamie were used to Rio’s presence by this point, and they convinced him to play Go Fish after the table was cleared. Rio shuffled the cards, throwing a few tricks in to impress the kids, then dealt. The table went silent as the kids examined their cards, and the atmosphere was oddly serious, as if they were playing high stakes poker.
Chloe went first. “Got any…twos?” she asked Rio.
“Go fish,” he said. “Got any fives?” he asked Jamie, who was trying to balance Maggie on his lap and play the game at the same time.
“Go fishing,” Jamie said happily, and barely waited for Rio to take a card before blurting out, “Got princes?” to his sister. She rolled her eyes.
“They’re called Jacks,” she informed him, but grudgingly handed one over.
“Got threes?” Jamie asked Rio. Rio handed over a pair of them. “Haha!” The little kid crowing with glee was insupportably cute, and Rio had to smile. “Got…um…fours?”
“Go fish,” Rio told him, but Jamie got his four, plus three more turns and down two full suites laid down before he struck out on Queens.
Jamie won the first game, and the second, and by then Chloe was sick of it and flounced off to the TV room to watch a documentary on abalone fishing in the Ring of Fire. Jamie trailed after her, a little bereft, and Maggie followed at his heels. Rio was getting ready to join them when Ren appeared with Devon in tow. Devon looked tired and more than a little off-balance, and Rio took Ren’s place at Devon’s side.
“You want to head back to the room?” he asked.
“Yes please.”
“We’ll see you two in the morning,” Ren said, and went after the kids himself.
Rio and Devon shuffled quietly back to Devon’s room, the silence between them thick with unspoken things . Devon waited until Rio got him safely sitting on the edge of the bed before he began with, “What happened between you and Em?”
Rio shut his eyes briefly. He knew this was coming. He wanted to be honest; for the first time in a decade, he wanted to tell someone the reality behind what he was, but…not right now. The truth was a lot to take in, and who knew how Devon would take it? He’d do it later, once this assignment was over and Porter Grey was nothing but a smear of oily black ash. He turned the question around instead. “You know your foster fathers are more than they seem, right?”
“Right,” Devon said. “I mean, I don’t know all the details, but both of them are immune to our allure, and Em can find anyone he was ever met before, no matter where the person is or how long it’s been since they met. It’s how he always knows where Angelo goes and gets there in time to keep him from doing something stupid.”
“And it doesn’t bother you not to know the details with them?”
“I trust them,” Devon said. After a moment, he added, “I trust you too, Rio. You don’t have to tell me what happened if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“I appreciate that, Dev.” Rio searched for the right words. “I saw something in your dad that surprised me. I haven’t seen anything like it in a long time, and the last couple times, well, they didn’t go so well for me.” Memories of Abomination! rang in his ears, along with the unbearable heat of heavenly fire. His shoulder still ached in cold weather. “It was cool, though. Em’s different.”
“Right,” Devon said, sounding sure of it even though Rio knew Devon didn’t really know what he was agreeing to. Rio sat down next to him, trying to get close enough for Devon to catch his scent. Devon leaned against him immediately, pulling both of them back until they were flat on the bed with their feet still on the ground.
“How’s Angelo?” Rio asked, his voice a low rumble right in Devon’s ear.
“Better. Frustrated as hell, but better. He’s so desperate for sex, man.” Devon laughed a little. “But aren’t we all?”
“Thirteen seems a little young to be thinking about it,” Rio said neutrally.
“It seems young for a normal person in this culture, maybe, but it’s not in other places. And it’s definitely not normal for a cambion. You remember that we can’t get off by ourselves, don’t you?”
Rio let that sink in for a moment. “Well, fuck,” he said at last.
“Yeah. Angelo’s basically got a stiffie all the time, but he has no way to come. Dads are really firm about us being legal before we fuck around on their watch. I mean, I didn’t arrive here a virgin, but I stayed celibate for five whole years while I lived here.”
“I have a really hard time imagining that.”
“Well, I more than made up for it once I started college.” Devon grinned. “Ren teaches us how to meditate, and if we do it regularly, it’s actually pretty effective at keeping our libidos at a manageable level, but that’s not what Angelo wants right now, you know?”
&nb
sp; “Sure.” Rio reached out and rolled Devon so that he was lying on top of Rio, chest to chest. The weight was negligible, but being manhandled, even if he couldn’t feel it, made Devon smile. “He wants to fuck like a rabbit.”
“Well, yes, but not just that. Angelo lived in another foster home before coming here, and he basically ruled it. He could have anything he wanted, he never bothered to go to school, he was popular, kids gave him stuff…by the time he hit puberty he was a little tyrant. Em got wind of him through the system and moved him up here before he could start fucking around, thank god.” Devon shook his head. “He didn’t even realize yet that it was wrong, using his allure indiscriminately. He wants people to do things for him, but he doesn’t want to ask, he just wants to take. It’s a violation, and he doesn’t understand that yet. Dads will let up a little on him once it sinks in.”
“Em mentioned that you guys are at a lot of risk of being taken advantage of,” Rio remarked.
“Sure. To anyone who figures out what we are and knows how to command us.” Devon went still with the memory. “You saw what the Pearly Gates was like.”
“Yeah, I did.” Rio had seen a lot worse than that over the years, but he was tired of talking about painful things. “So tell me. Do you think you even could get off right now?”
Devon lifted his head and grinned. “Maybe. The brain is the biggest sex organ we’ve got, you know. So not through touching, but maybe if you put on a show for me…” He batted his eyes suggestively. “Get all dolled up…maybe a little lipstick, a little eyeliner—”
“Hell no,” Rio said unequivocally. “Sorry to burst your bubble, kid, but I don’t do drag, I’m awful at imitating the fairer sex. I could probably manage some kind of show, though.” He rolled them again, then scooted Devon up the bed until he was reclined against the pillows. The cambion’s ridiculously expensive jeans were already bulging in front. “Yeah, you could probably come like this,” Rio smirked, then got up and made sure the door was locked before returning to bed. He knelt at the foot and slowly peeled his t-shirt off over his head, flexing so that all of his muscles were on display. He heard Devon whimper, and his smirk turned into a grin.