He took another drink, swallowed, then said, “Ask away.”
“First of all, your demon pals. The ones you said also want Legion captured.”
Yeah, his demon pals. The ones that didn’t exist. Campbell furrowed his brow. “I wouldn’t say pals. They’re more contacts.”
Contacts that took the form of his siblings, Pixley and the devil.
“Whatever they are, if one of them gets within throwing range of me or this house—I’ll kill them.” Varina crossed her arms, leaning against the counter. “That’s my deal-breaker.”
He frowned, and for no reason he could explain, decided to protest. “They might have info—”
“I don’t care. I don’t do demons. If they know what’s good for them, they stay the hell away from me.” She held his gaze a moment before reaching for her beer. “I don’t make a point to kill all of them that cross my path, but like you pointed out yesterday, I’ve spent too much of my life being just…a walking beacon to all things inhuman. I can’t take time to tell the ones who are the good guys from the bad. Too many demons have gotten close to me and tried to do some…” Varina shivered, looking back to him. “I dunno. Maybe it’s different for you. You have a penis.”
“Erm, yeah.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “I…I guess that makes a difference.”
She snorted. “You guess? I’m a girl.”
“Believe me. I noticed.”
At that, the slightest hint of color touched her cheeks, but she held his gaze. “Are you one of those guys who doesn’t accept how hard it is to be a woman? ’Cause I can tell you, I’ve seen some…bad stuff. I didn’t start killing demons because it’s a nice hobby. I did it because I don’t have a death wish anymore, and those who didn’t want to kill me definitely wanted to do other things. I kill demons to survive, and I’m pretty damn good at it. I have to be.”
He swallowed, nodded, rallying against his mind as it tried to pull him back to the Colosseum. A flash of that horrid, anxious fear hit his chest. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. A way for the universe, the ghosts of his failures and his own treacherous body to remind him of what awaited him when the lights went out.
For a moment, he wondered if Varina had experienced this sort of fear—the fear that had no reason to be there, but was because he couldn’t shake it. The fear born out of a night that should have been his last.
“Yeah. Okay,” he said. “No demons in the house.”
She nodded. “Thank you.” A brief, somewhat strained silence lingered in the beats before she started speaking again. “I thought maybe a night’s sleep would make everything make sense, but it didn’t. You being at my bar yesterday, then you showing up here. Legion coming back into my life the day I return to Mount Zion. You being a possession survivor. It’s… One coincidence I can handle. It’s all of them on top of each other that make my head hurt. I…I guess that’s my question. But it’s not really a question, more just a sense of this isn’t real. I don’t get how I could walk into Rat Trap and meet you, have you be who you are, and then have all this start to happen.”
Campbell’s throat tightened and the panicked sensation of before intensified. This he didn’t know how to explain—leaving her yesterday only to be sent back within a couple hours had thrown him too.
Still, he knew he had to try. So he inhaled and did his best. “My life the past few weeks has been shitty.”
“Just the past few weeks?”
He set his beer on the table, shrugging. “I am a demon magnet too. And maybe it’s because my signature’s stronger than yours”—at that, he saw the question in her eyes, the same one he couldn’t answer, and hurried on—“and maybe it’s because I have a penis, like you said, but most demons don’t fuck with me once they get close.”
Actually, now that he thought about it, his being male was an advantage he hadn’t considered as much as he should have. He knew his sisters complained about being harassed by earthbound demons on a semi-regular basis. Those demons ended up with bruised, if not skinned, egos by the time they parted ways.
He’d have to ask them. Some day. Maybe.
“A few weeks ago, though,” he continued, “that changed. The world almost ended.”
Varina’s eyes flickered. “I want to know more about that too.”
He could have guessed. “I’ll tell you about it sometime.” Like hell. “When that happened, a bunch of nastier demons escaped from Hell. Like Legion. And since then…”
Campbell didn’t know where to go from there, so he trailed off, hoping the words would come. Luckily, Varina picked them up for him.
“Larger demons saw you as a threat,” she said. “I’ve met people—career hunters—who say that the demons who come from Hell are different than the ones here.”
He nodded. “They are. The ones here that are most likely to cause you trouble are half breeds. Some of them integrate so well into the human world you’d never know they weren’t fully human. Fuck, they might not even know.”
“But the ones from Hell…”
“Yeah. They’re…they’re the ones like Legion. The ones who do the real damage, or can. The ones who have the power to possess others and do all kinds of just… They’re the big fish. The others are just minnows.”
Varina snickered. “Interesting analogy.”
“I honestly don’t know how I found Rat Trap,” Campbell went on. “My sister had a big reception in Natchez not too long ago—”
“Natchez? That area had some big scale demonic activity not all that long ago,” she interjected. “I was on the east coast at the time, but I heard it was seismic. Were you here for that?”
Depended on whether she was asking about Ava and Dante’s reception or when he and the others had been summoned to essentially fake-out his sister into thinking she was going to be executed. Well, no, it didn’t depend. The answer was yes. He’d been at both.
“No.”
Varina’s shoulders dropped a bit. “I’m beginning to think that story is bullshit. As much energy—or, I guess they were signatures—as some of my contacts claim were in the area, you’d think there’d have been a little…you know, mayhem.”
He killed a smirk. “Nothing?”
“Not that I’ve found. Unless that was when the world nearly ended.”
Campbell shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Though if memory served, Ava and Dante’s reception had been quite the party. It had also been the first time any of the Sins had seen Big J, who had crashed the scene in the way that only a god could.
Christ, everything about that event seemed like ancient history rather than the recent past, for as much as had happened in the time between.
He frowned at Varina. “Where was I?”
“Natchez.”
“Right. Yeah, I became familiar with the area after my sister’s thing. And then…I dunno, it just seemed like a good area. It was far enough away from my family to give me space, and isolated enough to keep me from being noticed by any of the bigger scale Hell Demons that might be attracted to my signature.” He grabbed his beer and threw back a mouthful. “But when you’re known, you can’t hide, no matter where you go.”
Again, she seemed to consider him. “You have a big family?”
“Monstrously.”
“Tell me.”
“I’m the oldest of seven.”
“Seven? Holy shit.”
He smirked. “Sounds about right.”
“How many brothers?”
“Four, myself included. We outnumber the girls, but they’re definitely the bosses.”
“You close to them?”
“Sometimes too close. It’s almost impossible to not be in each other’s business.” A still beat passed between them. He waved at her. “What about you? Brothers? Sisters?”
Varina smiled softly, the sort of empty smile that carried more heartache than laughter. “No. Well, a half-brother. Lina’s son. Robert Elwood Lee Jefferson.” She waited a breath. “Get it? Rob
ert Elwood Lee? My stepmom has a hard-on for the South.”
Campbell arched an eyebrow. “Don’t suppose anyone’s ever told you that you grew up in an old southern plantation home, did they?”
“Yeah, but my mom was a Yankee. And I’ve been away from here long enough I’m all but one, myself.” Varina shook her head, rubbing her arms as though cold. “For a long time I thought Lina married my dad because of the house. It was a great house once. Generational home, we came from a prominent family, yadda yadda. Then I found out she was one of his groupies.”
“Your dad had groupies?”
“He wrote horror. Jenning Jefferson? The name ring a bell?”
It did. A distant one. Campbell wasn’t much into horror, so he couldn’t say he’d read a title, but he knew the name.
“Yeah,” Varina went on, “he had groupies. Lina was mad for his writing. We’re talking somewhat stalker mad. Not quite Kathy Bates ala Misery, but close enough to make people uncomfortable when you pointed it out.”
“And he married her.”
At that, she somewhat sobered. “I think he was lonely, to be honest. After Mom died, he just…closed himself off. I think he wanted a voice in the house that didn’t remind him of her. And Lina’s about as far from my mother as you could’ve got. I don’t even know if he loved her, to be honest. She was just the first person to break through the wall, and only because she brought a battering ram.” Varina let out a deep breath. She seemed to close herself off, then, as though realizing how much she’d revealed. “But that’s…that’s not important.”
He doubted that, but again, knew better than to push. Except he didn’t know how to get back to whatever they’d been discussing before, or if she considered the question she’d asked answered.
Thankfully, she threw him a lifeline.
“How did you find Rat Trap?” she asked.
“I guess like anyone does. I stopped here for gas, decided to stay for a beer. I came back the next day and ordered something harder. That became habit.”
“And where had you been staying? Vidalia?”
“Gonna check my references?”
“Would you have a problem with that?”
The answer shouldn’t have surprised him, and it didn’t really, but he couldn’t help but feel a pang of regret. Though he hadn’t earned it and never would, he found himself wanting her trust. Misplaced in him as it would be. “No, feel free.”
Of course, should Varina do just that, he’d have to give Pixley notice to conjure up paperwork.
As it was, his ready agreement seemed to placate her. She relaxed. “And the rest?”
Campbell shrugged. “There’s not much to tell, and I’ve already spilled most of it. I came here to hide. It didn’t work. Yesterday when you came into Rat Trap, I thought you were a demon. I realized real quick you weren’t.”
And then they’d fucked like dogs, and it had been incredible.
“You made off pretty fast,” she remarked. “After the sex.”
“Yeah. I…” There was no good answer to that, so he didn’t try to come up with one. The truth was too pathetic, and he had enough of that in his life now. “That was a shit move on my part.”
Varina pulled a face. “Why? You didn’t owe me anything.”
“I…”
“I’m not breakable. I was wound up yesterday, but you leaving didn’t have anything to do with it.” She looked toward the hall. “So you left there. Then your brain kicked on.”
More or less.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“And you found me by following my signature? That’s what you said, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.” He waited a moment, decided they needed to do be done with this leg of the conversation, and said, “I can’t tell you why Legion is free—well, I can and I did, but I can’t explain why the timing worked out like this. Or anything that came before that. It wasn’t planned. None of this was. I can’t explain why the first person I’ve really talked to since some crazy bitch decided to end the world turned out to be you, or why we can’t seem to keep our hands off each other.”
Varina scowled and brought her hands up, palms out. “I’m having no such trouble.”
“Yeah, I think you’re lying just a bit.”
“I told you no more sex.”
“I know. I’m not asking for sex. But I’m also not gonna tell you that I don’t want it. A lot. With you. ‘Cause we both know that’s a crock of shit.”
At that, she reddened, though with embarrassment or excitement, he couldn’t tell. Perhaps it was a bit of both.
“Varina,” he said, his tone gentler. “I…I know this is fucked up. I don’t like it. Believe me, I don’t. But Legion…”
“I know about Legion.”
“I know you do. I’m here to help. I want to help.”
Varina seemed to consider him a long moment, her brow furrowed. At last, she said, “How did you do it?”
“What?”
“You said you caught Legion before. I didn’t think that was possible.”
Campbell waited a beat, exhaled. Here was another place the truth would serve him better, and he found he wanted her to know it. At least she wouldn’t expect the impossible.
“I caught it by accident,” he said.
“That’s not reassuring.”
“I know.”
“It knows you’re here. If it knows you’re here, it knows your agenda.”
“I know. But unless you tell me otherwise, I’m not going anywhere. And even then, I’ll probably stick around anyway.”
A soft smile crossed her face. “Well, I guess I have no choice, do I?”
“Not really.”
She was quiet a moment longer, then she nodded and pushed herself off the counter. “Okay then.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah.” Varina released a long breath and met his gaze. “Okay.”
He just looked at her—those endless mossy eyes, filled with acceptance, fear and conviction. He didn’t know how she did it, how she bore all the things she did on fragile, human shoulders. But in the past day, he’d seen her do that and more.
He had a feeling, when she was in motion, that she was a force to be reckoned with.
9
The photo had disappeared from the parlor floor, and while it wasn’t surprising, it did hurt.
But Varina couldn’t dwell. She had a job to do. And the few places to look downstairs had been exhausted, so it was time to move this party up to the most likely location—the third floor. A place that, in her memory, was an unholy mess.
In reality, it was a disaster area worthy of FEMA support.
After her mother’s death, Varina’s father had ordered everything that reminded him of Julia Jefferson to be closed off on the home’s third floor, which doubled as storage space as it was. Forgotten family heirlooms, knickknacks and other treasures that would fetch a killing on Antiques Roadshow were piled from floor to ceiling in the four large rooms that comprised the space. It was a hodgepodge of everything, forgotten pieces of her childhood unceremoniously shoved into neglected corners. Even before Legion, Varina hadn’t been up here much. Like the parlors, this area was deemed off limits. Too many breakables. Too much space. Too much opportunity to fuck around and fuck things up.
Like last night, she couldn’t help but shiver a bit as she crossed the imaginary line between safety and the forbidden zone. As though her stepmother would round the corner at any moment and scream at her for setting a foot out of bounds.
Varina swallowed and surveyed the options. She wasn’t sure how her father might have categorized the things he’d stored, or if he’d had any system at all. That might be giving the old man too much credit. And of course, she didn’t really have the luxury of knowing what she was looking for—the lawyer hadn’t been too keen on hints, let alone specifics.
Then again, the morning light had brought with it the revelation that dear old Dad’s lawyer might not have had a lot to g
o off. If the rumor mill at Rat Trap was to be believed, Jenning Jefferson’s last years had been in a state of rapid decline. Thankfully, he’d maintained his faculties enough to kick Lina and the spawn they’d sired to the curb, as well as out of his estate. It was about twelve years too late, but some victories were worth waiting for.
Varina licked her lips, pointed her feet to the left and forced herself to start walking. Even not knowing what she was looking for, she’d find it faster if she moved.
Probably even faster if she had Campbell help her…though to what end, she couldn’t say. What could she tell him that would make any sort of sense?
No. It was better this way.
For multiple reasons. Not the least of which was the man was, well, unnerving. He was kind, from what she could tell, with strong convictions. What she’d seen the prior evening had really been all the convincing a girl needed, but getting those answers certainly hadn’t hurt.
Of course there remained unanswered questions—such as why she felt the need to leap into his arms and rub all over him like a cat in heat. Why every time she saw him, her chest tightened and her heart jolted. Varina had skipped the part in school where she’d gotten to have a social life, develop crushes, and learn about relationships. And aside from helping her barter for room, board, and essentials, sex hadn’t played much of a role in her life.
She’d thought last night that her reaction to Campbell might have been an echo of their intense coupling—both the hard fuck they’d enjoyed at the bar, and the surprise one here. The insides of her thighs were a bit tender today, a pleasant sort of ache that made her all the more aware of what had transpired.
It was distracting, her attraction to him…but Varina wasn’t convinced that a distraction was a bad thing. On one hand, focusing on Campbell and his mysterious pull on her abated some of her fear. On the other, she couldn’t afford to not be at the top of her game right now. Not here, and definitely not with Legion.
Best to focus on what was real. Discovering what her father had wanted her to find. Why his lawyer had implored her to come back to Mount Zion.
Deliverance from Sin: A Demonic Paranormal Romance (Sinners & Saints Book 5) Page 10