by C. M. Owens
Darting to my baby’s side, I gingerly lift her for the first time from Karma’s arms, cradling her to my chest. I’m a little weirded out by those black eyes of hers, but other than that, she’s completely perfect.
I can deal with the freaky eyes. Most of my friends have freaky eyes lately. Then there’s my demonic, doll-possessing girlfriend who is always creepy.
“She’s beautiful,” I say softly, wondering if my heart is about to explode when her tiny hand closes around one of my fingers.
“Support her head,” Alyssa says to me as I start walking toward the window, smearing a line of blood over baby Kicera’s left eyebrow, and then her right.
“What the hell are you doing?” one of the mean women snap at me as I lift my baby high, just like Rafiki did baby Simba when he was announced as the future ruler of the animal kingdom.
This is why she chose the red moon night to shoot out of her mother’s poor vagina.
Just as I start singing, “It’s the circle of life,” a vicious, savage werewolf snaps its slobbering jaws and attacks the barricade spell.
I stumble back, covering Kicera, protectively cradling her to my chest, and stare in horror.
“My baby will never be your future queen if that’s how you treat her!” I snap. “Hashtag, ungrateful savages.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, get over—”
The wall is ripped away, and one of the deformed monsters shatters through the barricade, eyes on me.
“Kya, get my baby,” I say quietly, seeing something sharp and black rise behind the beast’s head as its chest heaves harshly. “I’ll distract—”
Per the usual, it’s hard to finish a sentence around here, especially when the creature’s head suddenly starts sliding off its shoulders. Immortal speed is faster than thought. It’ll interrupt a sentence real damn quick when a head starts rolling toward you.
Quickly, I shield my baby’s eyes, since I read their first day in the world might set the precedent for how they turn out. So far, my daughter’s future looks about as bright as a murderous psychopath’s.
Great. My precious daughter is going to be Slade Jr.
Something dark shivers out of the body, and I get a little nauseated when it shoots free. A yelp is startled out of me when I realize my baby is sucking it in. Less than an hour of being a father, and already I’ve fucked up my kid.
“No,” I state firmly as my baby’s freakishly terrifying black eyes glisten and slowly fade to a dull, normal blue. “We don’t eat psychotic monster souls, not even on our birthdays. You hear me?” I tell her, but she makes no sound. Just once again wraps those tiny little adorable fingers around the one finger I’m pointing at her.
The body of the monster collapses, and Alyssa steps out from behind it, a bloody heart in her hand and black claws still extended from her fingertips.
She cracks her neck to the side, silver eyes glowing as she smirks. “That feels so much better than I expected,” she says.
“My baby just ate that soul,” I hiss, glaring at her, since clearly it’s her fault for killing it right in front of my sweet little Spangel. She’s the one fucking up my kid instead of me. Then I look down at my baby. “Spangel, spit it out right now. I mean now,” I say in a firm, but still very gentle tone, since she’s less than an hour old, and I don’t want to her to grow up with daddy issues that stemmed from her first night of life.
I mean, it’s likely she’ll still be a raging slut, and I’ll still be blamed for any sexual guilt she experiences the night after a regretful hookup—really hope she never feels comfortable enough to share those details with me. But that’s because I’m the reason she’s half succubus, not because I don’t love her enough. Hashtag, incubus parenting problems. Hashtag, new meaning to daddy issues.
Hashtag, fuck adulting.
“I’ve already said we weren’t naming her Spangel!” Karma, my lovely wet blanket, harps. I’ll have to stick with Kicera Kal-El Michaels, it seems.
Michaels is an oldie but a goodie.
“She ate an immortal soul?” Karma asks with wide eyes, as though that’s just processed.
“A monster’s immortal soul,” I gripe. “This is all your side of the family’s fault. My side are just sexy.”
Her eyes water as her smile grows. “She ate her first soul,” Karma says as if she’s enamored. “Aww.”
“Even I find this creepy,” Kya states as the ruckus outside gets louder, drawing her attention to it.
“Well, it’s your side of the family too,” I remind her.
I look out to see Slade and Kane circling each other, and I quickly deposit our immortal-soul-eating little sweetheart to Karma’s arms, before rushing back to the window.
Both lycans are growling. Both are gnashing their teeth. And both are seemingly oblivious to the chaos around them as the last monster falls and all the regular beasts turn on each other.
Alyssa steps through the hole in the wall before I can stop her, and I trip over myself to catch up, grabbing my dropped sword on the way. “Get back inside you pregnant crazy lady!” I snap.
And draw way too much attention to us. Horrible thing to do on a red moon night amongst a legion of beasts. I know I look too—hashtag—damn tasty.
“My second favorite pair of leather pants have just been ruined,” I state flatly when five pairs of various colored eyes land on us.
As if she’s just been waiting for the right time, she suddenly shifts, her dress ripping off her body as her lycan emerges, bigger than usual. I really didn’t think she had enough strength to do that, but I’m so not second guessing my luck right now.
I take a step back. Clearly she can handle this without me.
Tipping her head back, she roars into the air. It sounds like earsplitting thunder shooting out of the speakers at a Metallica concert. Damn, I miss the eighties. Or was that the nineties?
I’ll Google it later.
Ella slides to her side, still in lycan form with a lot of fresh gashes of her own, and the two of them tip their heads back, releasing the same roar together.
I’m forced to cover my ears as I drop to my knees, feeling a pressure pushing against the sternum of my chest, as though they’re commanding me to my motherfucking knees. I don’t feel as bad about it when I see Drackus and Calypso doing the same.
I’m not the only one either. All the beasts start dropping to their bellies, eyes going down, as the two continue to rattle the air.
The second the roaring stops and the pressure in my chest decreases, I see all the beasts turn around and bolt in numerous different directions.
Alyssa quickly shifts back to flesh, staggering like that took all she had. Leaping to her side, I steady her and look around for Kane, who has vanished. Shit. Maybe he’s back in the cage, if we’re lucky.
Ella shifts just as fast, weirdly not affected by the moon, and she helps Alyssa back inside, actually lifting her pregnant mother and carrying her.
It’s an odd sight, if I’m being honest.
Alyssa looks completely exhausted, muttering something about Karma having a gestation period cats envy, while she’s giving elephants a run for their money.
Slade is standing in flesh form, stepping over Zee, who glares at his back while pulling a knife out of his stomach. Did the scarred menace put a blade through the freaky night stalker’s stomach? Or is Zee just hating him like usual?
Not important.
Dropping to my ass, I reach inside my pocket, pulling out the cigar I’ve been holding onto for not very long at all, and light it off a burning chunk of…I’m not really sure if that’s a heart or a lung.
Regardless, it’s fire, and I use it.
Tonight, I’m a daddy.
Chaz takes the cigar I hand him when he comes to help me to my feet, and I clap my baby’s new uncle on the shoulder.
“My baby really knows how to make an entrance,” I say as a piece of the roof collapses and lands beside me on the ground.
We both look at it, then b
ack to each other. He rolls his eyes, groaning as he steps inside.
“Best night ever,” I yell to the woods full of vicious, ungrateful, savages who couldn’t appreciate my queen baby. “Hashtag, fuck you all and goodnight.”
Chapter 32
ELLA
Kimber pops into the cellar I’ve invaded, and I blink in surprise.
“You came,” I say, glancing at my phone that still doesn’t have a returned call or message from her since last night when I told her what I planned to do—after I held the baby and watched Slade slink off into the night without me, leaving me behind with my family to pick up the pieces of the safe house while quarantining the newest immortal-soul-eating member and her mother.
“Like you said, this isn’t just about saving you or Slade,” she says, disappearing then returning with a huge white board in tow.
“What’s that?” I ask, confused as she starts setting it up.
“This is a thousand and one timelines with important events. Each line represents another timeline he tried to alter the future, and it shows where the lines intersect for the main events, and which details have changed. The red line is our current, and obviously the most important, timeline. There are still events that overlap, but a lot has also changed. Amy dying as a First is a new change,” she says quietly, pointing at it. “She died usually every time during the battle with the anointed, because Leah killed her. We didn’t even realize we were living on borrowed time with her.”
I exhale shakily, nodding.
“Leah’s a big change from the original timelines,” I say, watching her grimace.
“It’s hard to picture her as one of them.”
“It could be one big reason Slade hated her even more than Roslyn,” comes Kya’s voice from the top of the stairs, causing us both to dart a gaze up.
“What’re you doing here?” Kimber asks in confusion.
“She’s the only person who cares about Slade as much as I do, so I pulled her aside last night before I left to go find him,” I tell Kimber, resuming my task of writing down all the important new variables just this version of Slade has created. “Slade will be able to convince everyone else in the family that I’m wrong and he’s right about how much power I actually have. Everyone seems to doubt me, understandably so,” I explain.
She just stares at me for a second.
“And they won’t really care if he dies in my place,” I go on. “It’ll make them hope for the best that he at least weakens Hannah enough for the rest of us to kill her.”
“I’m still a little confused, but at the same time, it makes sense now that I’ve put thought into it. There’s a reason Slade never wanted me to read, and the slave language is certainly not a language I’ve seen in that book. Trust me. I tried to make it appear,” Kya says.
“Speaking of the journal, where is it?” Kimber asks.
“Back with Slade, though I wrote down as many of the equations as I could,” I tell her.
“I have all the important ones already jotted down from last night when you left it with me before the red moon,” she confesses. “I might have also started working on this before you told me what you wanted to do, because I knew what you would do,” she adds.
“If I’m going to help,” Kya says, jogging the rest of the way down the stairs, “you better ensure me there’s a way to keep you both alive. I’ll put Slade out of his misery myself if you make all his pain pointless,” she tells me pointedly, brokering no room for argument.
“It’s bigger than just the two of us,” I tell her seriously, not admitting how much I really need to save him.
“He’s earned the right to save you,” she adds.
“I know. If there’s no other way out of this, I will do all I can to give him that.”
We stare at each other for a minute before she finally gives me one nod of her head. “Then let’s get started. He’ll be looking for you soon.”
“And I’ll let him find me later, while you two continue to work, then I’ll return when he goes off to run his own army and do his Slade stuff,” I tell them, looking over Kimber’s timelines.
We start discussing the numerous things that have changed, argue over unimportant facts, get annoyed with how much hasn’t changed, despite the fact it really should have, and then argue over what variables are important.
Kimber’s right; it’s really hard to change the future. More so than I ever would have thought.
“We should consider all differences important.”
“Dragonites are different.”
“Only from some timelines,” Kimber points out. “In others, they still appear on the same night. In the ones they don’t appear, Ella gets possessed and her soul gets destroyed on that night, using that cosmic burst.”
“If it was easy for her to destroy souls, she’d have already destroyed Morgana’s, but she hasn’t,” Kya tells us. “Even if Morgana has mentally checked out and no longer really exists in there, her soul is still stuck. Destroying a soul means Hannah would have to infuse her own demonic soul with the new body,” she continues. “And to do so, she needs that extra cosmic boost, but she’d also be easier to kill.”
“So if we attacked before the cosmic blast—”
“You die and Hannah returns to hell, likely to climb back up from the pits of it again to destroy the world at a later date,” Kimber says, circling one timeline and reminding me of that horrific memory.
“It took her a week to climb back from hell when we killed her host body one night,” I grumble. “She was still back on the night of the second portal.”
“Slade worked so hard to find out when it was happening, when he already knew when,” Kya says under her breath.
“The point of this experiment was for him to learn everything he could, searching for any minor detail that could be important that he might have missed when he knew too much,” Kimber explains.
“If I run, she finds me in two different timelines,” I say on a sigh. “And I’d run away with Slade if I knew it would work without consequence, but she also kills all of you.”
“Terrible plan,” Kya agrees.
“I hate to point this out, but a baby who eats immortal souls is new. Any chance that scary little niece of yours can eat Hannah?” Kimber asks.
Kya shoots her an angry glare. “Demonic souls are different from souls that haven’t evacuated a non-demonic body. If she eats Hannah, Hannah will simply possess her. Just like Karma or I would.”
“Anyone else fascinated with the fact that Dice survives all one thousand and one timelines?” I muse aloud. “At least as the dust clears from that final vision, anyway. Who knows what happens after that?”
“Yeah, but only one timeline has my sister staying with him long enough to procreate, which means his odds were one in a thousand and two,” Kya states dismissively.
My eyes come up to meet Kimber’s at the same time she looks over at me.
“What are the same odds Slade has produced enough new variables to actually save the two of us together and find a way to kill Hannah?” I ask her with cautious hope.
“Pretty good, considering how many things are different. Even Roslyn being with Thad is new, mostly because in this timeline, Slade terrorized her, and she and Thad grew closer because of it. Same for Leah and Zee. Though I doubt Thad or Zee will warm up to Slade because of it, but those variables are still new variables.”
“We’re stronger as a group, but how do I kill Hannah once she possesses me without killing myself in the process?”
No one has an answer for that.
“Morgana is a changeable detail, too. I’m not sure who Hannah possessed in some of those timelines because they haven’t been players in this one. Morgana was never an important component, just available when Hannah needed a weak witch to grow stronger in,” I tell them, grasping at straws.
“But Morgana will inevitably die, just like all the ex-hosts, so she’s not an important new variable. Keep in mind that just because a var
iable is new, that doesn’t make it important,” Kimber is fast to say, which makes sense.
I know not everything new will be of use, but I still feel like I’m missing something crucial.
“I thought the goal was to kill Hannah once ejected from Morgana’s body,” Kya states, confused.
“Impossible,” Kimber and I both say at the same time, Slade’s visions haunting our minds.
“Slade thinks he’s able to save Morgana, because he put the real memories in the journal. He needed to believe he could save her, that way he could convince Gavin of the same thing by showing him his thoughts and plans,” Kimber goes on.
“Gavin’s a new variable. Slade killed him immediately in all the other timelines during our first encounter with him. In those other times, Slade joined everyone in the battle after I shattered the force field outside the rings,” I interject. “Gavin is also a lot stronger in this timeline than in the others, because he fed off those stones to be strong enough to evade Slade’s death traps in the cages.”
“A cockroach surviving a nuclear blast is not a new variable,” Kya says on a long sigh. “The cockroach being Gavin.”
This goes on for a few more hours, everyone pointing out the exceptions in magic’s laws, the contradictory pieces we have, and overanalyzing each new variable that may or may not be of importance.
I slip out during a heated debate about Zee’s new powers being an important new variable and a key piece of the puzzle.
Then I go deal with a furious Slade who is pissed he can’t close his eyes and see my every move, so I distract him with really hot sex in the woods for an hour or so, then slip back when he gets called away for duty.
“If we simply attempted to kill her, she’d body hop to prevent herself from going to hell,” Kimber is saying to Kya.
“We already know hell’s a bad idea. But what about purgatory? You and Thad can toss her into purgatory!” Kya says animatedly.
“You think I haven’t already thought of that?” Kimber snaps. “Beings in purgatory grow stronger when they’re already as strong as Hannah. She’s the reason purgatory was opened the last time, and we didn’t even know she existed. Well, Gage did, but he didn’t know she was involved, even though his own mother was involved with that madness.”