by Colleen Vanderlinden
Published by Peitho Press
Detroit, Michigan, 2016
© 2016 Colleen Vanderlinden
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email the author at [email protected].
Contents
Books by Colleen Vanderlinden
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Note from Colleen
Bonus Story: Christmas in the Loft
About the Author
Chapter One
My name is Molly Brooks. Goddess of Death, the Angel of Detroit, arguably the scariest bitch on the planet.
And right this second, I’m sitting in a meeting that’s already lasted about four hours too long repeatedly telling myself not to kill, maim, or mentally destroy anyone.
Because that would be rude.
I sat at one end of the long black table that had been brought into my audience chamber. A mix of family, friends, allies, and people who wanted yet more shit from me filled out the rest of the seats. The leader of the East Coast vampire family was currently droning on and on and he was just really lucky I’ve mellowed somewhat in the last few years.
“I’m just saying, it is completely unfair and ridiculous that Rayna and her family swept in and claimed the midwest as their own. There are protocols, and she is inexperienced. We live in a whole different world now and—”
“Where was all of this concern when the vampires of this region were running wild, feeding on and draining Normals like it was going out of style?”
“We had no idea it was so bad—”
“And whose fault is that?” I asked. I kept my eyes on his. I have gotten very good, over the past few years, at speaking in a quiet, calm way that really just seems to freak certain assholes out even more. I get a little satisfaction from it, especially when it’s clear that they can’t wait to get away from me.
As was the case with the slimy vampire currently addressing me. What an asshole. He hated me. He couldn’t hide his emotions from me, but he was trying hard to hide his thoughts. He was full of greed and jealousy and he had a taste for young boys, which I would be dealing with as soon as he was out of my palace.
For some reason, it’s looked down upon when I kill supernatural beings when they come to me for a good faith meeting. It just means I have to go after them again later. As if I don’t have enough shit to do.
“How could it have been our fault? We weren’t here,” he said in exasperation.
“Detroit wasn’t worth your time until it became worth something. You were willing to let your brethren here run wild. Queen Rayna saw a void and had the intelligence and the tenacity to fill it, and she has made this region safer with her skill and devotion,” I said. I glanced at Rayna, who was seated a few seats down on my left. She gave me a respectful nod.
“I am not the only one who is unhappy about this,” the vampire said. What was his name again? Van or Lan or something like that. I honestly didn’t care enough to notice when he was introduced.
“May I, my Lady?” Rayna asked me, and I nodded. She stood up and faced the other vampire.
“If you want it so bad, I dare you to come at me. You’ve been sneaking your people into my region. And it’s not just you. I know what Jacques from Montreal region is up to, and Stefan from the west coast, too. I’m sending them home in one piece when I find them for now. I’m happy to change my tactics if my message isn’t getting through. None of you are welcome here.”
“You’ll start a war between the bloodborn. There are protocols to this—”
“Screw your protocols, Van,” Rayna said pleasantly. “As I said, if you’re so bothered, come at me.”
“Right. And you won’t bring you friend in on your side,” Van said with a roll of his eyes. “It’s easy to talk tough when you have the Goddess of Death as an ally.”
Rayna and Van went back and forth. I knew Rayna would never ask me to get involved, and in all honestly, it wasn’t my problem. I had enough shit to do without getting involved with the bloodborn.
Times like this, I missed having Brennan around to organize my life and deal with those who only wasted my time. I mean, it was literally years ago now, but I really could use someone who could streamline this shit the way he had. An assistant or something.
I almost laughed. Yeah. I could just imagine the job posting for that one. “Wanted: experienced personal assistant willing to work with witches, demons, vampires, shifters, immortals, and other supernatural beings. Must not be easily intimidated. Also must be willing to work odd hours.”
Van was at the point of shouting at Rayna now, who remained icy and calm.
“We’ve wasted enough time on this,” I said calmly, and the room quieted immediately. “She already told you what to do with your issues. Man up or shut up. Either way, stop wasting my time. Next,” I said, looking around the table.
The next thing was a report on the status of the area shifters. I half-listened. I had already heard it, from every group in the city and the rest of the world as well: they’d suffered many losses due to the undead before they’d finally been destroyed by Eunomia. They were working on rebuilding…
Why was this even my problem?
I tried to look attentive, but my mind wandered. I was working twenty hour days, literally, and had been since the end of the Undead War. Too many messes, too many afraid people, both supernatural and Normal. All looking to me for some kind of reassurance. I wanted to laugh. If there was one thing I was shit at, it was making people feel better. But I seemed to be the only one everyone expected to do just that, so I managed.
I was spending all this time here. My kids spent more time with my mom and my aunt than they did with me. Zoe already knew all the words to every Richard Marx song ever recorded thanks to Megaera’s 1980s obsession, and my mom had been the one to see baby Hades’ first steps.
They’d mostly stopped asking for me, because they knew the answer was always “no, mama has to work.”
Knowing they were with two beings who loved them nearly as much as I did didn’t make me feel any better about barely having time for them.
And if I was failing them, I was failing Nain, too. But to be honest, I’ve been failing Nain for a long time.
When I got home that night, I was greeted, as always, by imps and demons. I made my way through the corridors that led to our private living quarters.
I missed the loft. This… all of this, had been my dad’s vision, my dad’s design. And while it comforted me a little and made me feel closer to him now that he was gone, it was nothing like what I felt for the loft with its view of downtown Detroit, or my house, which Nain had secretly had re-built for me after it was destroyed by yet another pissed off supernatural who wanted to see me dead.
Eventually, maybe they’d get the point: I can’t die, so it’s stupid to keep trying.
The smart ones had long figured out that the way to get to me was to go after those I love. Most recently, it had been my son. And that
was why, no matter how much I preferred living in actual Detroit instead of this Netherwoods side-realm of it, I couldn’t chance moving us all back. Not just yet. We had extra layers of protection here that we wouldn’t have outside the Netherwoods, and I wasn’t ready to give any of that up yet, if ever.
Maybe someday.
I nodded at the two demons stationed outside the entrance of our personal quarters and unlocked the door. My aunt Megaera was curled up in the overstuffed chair near the fireplace, a paperback set face-down beside her. I gently shook her awake and she woke with a start.
“Oh, hey. I didn’t mean to nod off,” she said apologetically.
“It’s okay. It was a long day,” I told her.
“They’re all long lately.”
I didn’t know what else to say to that, so I just nodded.
“Hades has another tooth coming in, so he’s been a very unhappy little demon god all day,” she said with a shake of her head. “And Zoe has been… even more Zoe than usual.”
“I need to see about finding a shifter family she can play with. She needs to run off some of that energy.”
She nodded. “Plus, who knows? Maybe if she’s around more shifters, she’ll be able to fight her way to the shift, despite everything.”
I smiled, and she got up, gave me a hug, and then left. I knew she loved my adopted daughter, and everyone hoped she would eventually find some way to deal with the insane amount of energy and chaos inside her. Zoe is something that, according to just abut everyone, should not exist. She’s the child of a demon and a shifter, two species that never mate, because the rare offspring of such a union are always unbalanced, destructive, and obsessive. Not because of any inherent evil, but because their demon side prevents the shifter side from ever fully coming into itself. A shifter without the shift has no outlet for its energy, and this eventually ends up driving any demon shifter literally insane.
The general consensus when I’d found Zoe was that I should have ended her life, that it would have been a kindness. Instead, I’d adopted her. She did better in the Netherwoods, which was another reason we made our home here instead of in Detroit proper. But even that probably wouldn’t be enough. Not unless she found a way to shift.
After seeing Aung Megaera out, I made my way back to where my kids slept. Zoe’s room looked like it had been decorated by a horde of Disney princesses and fairy godmothers: pink everywhere, from the walls to the billowy curtains and the canopy over the little white bed. A not-at-all subtle crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, and the walls were lined with shelves of stuffed animals. Zoe was currently going through a cat phase, and my mom and aunt (and Nain) were totally happy to indulge her. Housecats, tigers, lions, leopards, panthers, bobcats… if it was a type of cat, there was probably a stuffed animal of it somewhere on Zoe’s shelves, in just about any color of the rainbow.
Under the pink canopy, Zoe turned in her sleep. I quietly stepped over to her bed and straightened the covers around her. Her forehead was creased in consternation, even in sleep. I smiled to myself, wondering who she was telling off in her dreams. I knelt down beside her bed and gently ran my fingers through her hair. I love my son, obviously, but I saw so much of myself in Zoe, so much of that anger, that fear, that sense that something in me just wasn’t right… I wouldn’t wish those feelings on anyone, but I knew my daughter had them already. The only difference was that she’d always be surrounded by people who loved her. She would never be alone the way I was.
“I love you, Zoebug,” I whispered. I bent and gently kissed the top of her head, then I went across the hall to check on Hades.
His room was probably the calmest place I’ve ever been. Nothing but white walls, simple wooden furniture, a few stuffed toys, and a blanket our witch friend, Ada, had knitted for him, also in a soothing green. My mom had done this, just as she’d decorated Zoe’s room, sensing for their feelings, what they liked and didn’t like, what soothed them and what made them happy. Hades is full of anger, even at such a young age. I can feel it, and my mom and aunt can feel it. He seems calmer in his room, so I think my mother did a pretty good job.
Some moms might feel let down or like a failure or something for not doing that most basic of “motherly” things, decorating their kids’ nurseries. I don’t. I am perfectly fine with letting people who are better at things than I am take over.
Only stupid people think they alone can do everything.
I leaned down over Hades in his crib and ran my hand gently over his head. At just over a year old, he’s got this thick, wavy dark hair that goes every which way, but it’s probably the softest thing I’ve ever felt. I pulled his blanket up over him and sensed for him. Calm. No nightmares yet tonight. Some nights, his thoughts and emotions were a violent mix of rage and fear, and on those nights, I wanted to kill my enemies all over again.
I gave him one last look before heading to my room to shower and fall into bed. Nain was still out on patrol, and I’d be lucky if I saw him before I had to get up and back to work judging souls before whatever the next day’s mess would be landed in my lap.
I settled onto my stomach, my face pressed to Nain’s pillow, and was asleep before I’d even fully closed my eyes.
A warm hand at the base of my spine, a wash of power that I would recognize in an instant. I opened my eyes, letting my vision adjust to the darkness in our bedroom.
“What time is it?” I asked, my voice scratchy with sleep. I swallowed.
“Little after three,” he said. He settled in on my side of the bed, pulling the covers over the two of us, and then he gathered me into his arms. “Missed you, baby,” he murmured.
“Missed you more. This sucks.”
Nain held me tighter and let out a short laugh. “That’s an understatement.”
We were both dead tired. We would have been all over one another otherwise. For now, I was content to just lie in his arms, finally getting a chance to talk to him and I could sense that he felt the same.
“How’d your meeting go?” he asked, running his hands up and down the bare skin of my lower back, beneath where my wings met my back. I sighed in contentment and pressed my face to his bare chest.
“They are such a bunch of fucking assholes,” I muttered after a while. “So much bitching and whining and expecting me to fix every one of their idiotic problems. And that asshole from New York is still trying to claim that Rayna has no right to rule here.”
“Rayna was there, right?”
I nodded. “She told him to stop talking and come at her if he wanted Detroit so badly.”
Nain grunted. “More fucking messes to clean up if the vampires start going at it.”
“I know. But if it comes to that, it’s up to her to fight it. I can’t come in. It’ll only undermine her own power.”
“And you could end it in like a second if you wanted to.”
“That, too. Van and his allies need a good, thorough ass-kicking. Rayna and her people can do that if it comes to it.”
“We’ll keep an eye on it,” he said after a few moments. By “we,” I knew he meant the coalition of Detroit supernaturals he worked with in Detroit. For a while, he had spent all of his time in the Netherwoods, at my side. He still led my demon guards, but little by little, he’d started spending more time in Detroit, back at the loft with Ada and Stone, as well as a couple of shifters and witches I hadn’t had a chance to meet yet. Nain’s team was reforming. For a time, we’d assumed that I was enough. Clearly, I am not. Detroit needs Nain and his team, and he needs Detroit.
You can take the Nain Rouge out of Detroit, but you can’t take the Detroit out of the Nain Rouge. He was the city. In my own way, so am I. I get that. I’m a symbol of the city that made me, an example of how badass we are, how good we can be when we want to, how bad we can be if you piss us off. I get that. It freaks me the fuck out, but I get it.
We lay in silence for a while, his hands still massaging my lower back. He let out a small laugh. “Sometimes I miss the
days when my biggest problem was the Purple Gang.”
“It was a lot less crazy, I guess,” I said.
He nodded. “We always had vampires and werewolves and rogue witches… that hasn’t changed. But it all seemed simpler. I knew who my enemies were. I fought without worrying about whether I’d survive it or not, because I didn’t care. It’s weird how easy that made everything.”
“Still. It was pretty bloody back then sometimes from what I’ve seen,” I said, thinking back to photos I’d seen online and in history books. They’d looked like outtake scenes from the Godfather movies or something.
“It was. It was bad for a while there, but breaking the Purples felt good. Things got better afterward.”
I gently pushed him onto his back so I could rest my arms on his chest. I rested my chin on my forearms and looked at him. He was still as stupidly gorgeous as the first time I’d seen him, same five o’clock shadow, same sapphire eyes, same strong, stubborn jaw.
“What else did you like about being alive back then?” I asked him. I loved when he talked about the past. Over three hundred years… and he’s young compared to my family and all of the other immortals. The difference was that he’d spent that time in Detroit. He’d seen the city born, watched it grow, seen the good and the bad. He’d been there for all of it, from the very beginning.
He ran his fingers through my hair, and I shivered in pleasure. He seemed to be thinking.
“The music was good,” he began. “There was this sense of excitement in the city, like the whole world was out there for the taking. Those flapper dresses, man,” he said, and I shook my head. “You’d look good in one of those.”
“You were pretty hot back then,” I told him. I’d seen the photographs in one of the many old photo albums he had in the loft.
“Were?” he huffed, and I laughed.
“Better with age,” I assured him.
“I don’t age,” he told me, and I grinned.
“You stand up straighter than you used to. You can see it in your posture in those old pictures. You still weren’t sure about yourself.”
Demons of Christmas Past: A Hidden Novella Page 1