Varina parted her lips, took another ragged breath, then asked, “Did you mean it?”
His heart jolted. “I—”
A loud, thundering knock cut through the air before he could get another word out. Both he and Varina were on their feet the next instant, facing the main hall in a silent standoff.
“I don’t suppose you ordered takeout?” Campbell muttered.
“I was just about to ask you if you had invited any friends over.”
A few heavy seconds ticked by before the knock came again. When it did, Varina took off in a blur and vanished into the hall, Campbell all but tripping over himself to keep up. The calm that had settled over him exploded into a frenzied apprehension. The cold, icy fingers of panic began to claw at him, and he found himself perched at the edge of something large and awful.
No. Not now. You can’t lose your shit now.
But trying to hold off his fear only made it stronger. The walls began to melt and change, twisting and contorting until he saw he was in the middle of the Colosseum, lost in a sea of roars and beasts. Only this was worse, because Varina was there, and she was going to—
Blood pounded in his ears, his head felt full of lead, but Campbell forced himself back. He came awake in his body just in time to see Varina wrench the front door open. To identify the woman on the other side as the stepmother, and the thing in her hand—the thing pointed at Varina’s head—as a gun.
“Hello, my dear,” the woman said, a sneer twisting her formerly pretty face. “I thought we might try this again.”
Varina stood for a long moment, staring at the woman with an oddly blank look. Then her lips did some twisting of their own, stretching into a mockery of a smile.
And a beat too late, Campbell understood.
“Great minds,” came Legion’s thick reply.
It waited for comprehension to dawn before it seized the woman by the throat. The smug satisfaction that had contorted Lina’s face melted into something Campbell knew intimately.
“Where are my manners?” Legion cooed, its unnatural smile cracking Varina’s mouth. “Please, come inside. After all, this is your party.”
27
Varina watched through eyes she didn’t control as Lina’s lips began to turn blue, her throat a patchwork collage of red and white.
“Don’t pretend you’re not enjoying this,” Legion all but purred, its booming voice coming from some place within her. “I live in you, remember?”
The demon hadn’t spoken aloud. Instead, the words clamored and echoed, shot back at her from a thousand directions, chased by a cold stab of awareness. The same that had consumed her the night before, when she’d felt her mouth form words her brain hadn’t conjured. The same that had followed her as a child as she’d screamed at a parent who hadn’t been able to hear her.
Legion had assumed control.
In the distance, she heard someone saying her name. No, shouting her name. Campbell seemed so far away, but he’d been right behind her a moment ago.
Varina looked around wildly, but her view didn’t change. She tried to draw breath to no avail, tried relaxing her hand to release Lina, but her hand didn’t budge. Rather, she felt her arm lift higher, watched as Lina’s body dangled inches off the ground.
Outside herself, she heard Legion’s voice.
“I wouldn’t, Superbia,” it was saying. “I’m afraid Mrs. Jefferson has been quite the naughty girl.”
Again, Varina tried to force her eyes or neck or anything to obey—to see what Campbell was doing, but her body was not her own. Instead, she remained focused on Lina’s paling face.
God, what was the woman doing here?
“What do you think?” Legion asked. Again, Varina felt like whatever part of her was left was in danger of being split in two. “She wanted to know if you had found it.”
“Found what?”
“You are a dense little thing, aren’t you?” Legion chuckled again—that terrible, echoing sound. Then it said aloud, “Oh, come now.” It whirled, and Varina caught a glimpse of Campbell, whose eyes were burning with pure, venomous hate, a sphere of fire dancing in his palm. “Do you truly think to intimidate me?”
“Put the woman down.”
“What? This woman?” Legion jostled Lina, whose thready breaths were coming slower and slower. “Aren’t you going to ask? I know you want to.”
Campbell’s nostrils flared. “Where’s Varina?”
Legion sighed, shook its head. “Wrong question.”
The flame in Campbell’s hand flared. “Answer me.”
“Or what? You’ll set me on fire? I don’t think so. You’re far too attached to this body.”
Varina’s viewpoint shifted again as Legion looked down, roaming its gaze downward, paying close attention to her breasts.
“Not that I can blame you,” it continued. “I will say, you have impeccable taste.”
Lina began wheezing, which forced Legion’s attention back up.
“It’d be a shame if Superbia let the bitch die so soon,” Legion told her. “And here I’ve been looking forward to this all week.”
“Please. Don’t make me watch this.” Varina’s short life had thus far been comprised of a series of terrible things. Watching her stepmother die, choked by her own hand, was easily the worst.
“Don’t go soft on me now, Vee,” Legion spat. “You’ve dreamt about this your whole life. Consider it a parting gift.”
“Put her down, goddammit.”
“I’ll say it one more time,” Campbell called, directing the demon’s attention upward again. If possible, he looked wilder than before, the pulsing fire in his palm flaring with a heartbeat’s rhythm. “Put her down.”
Legion stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. “Fine,” the demon replied, relaxing Varina’s hand just enough for Lina to fall into a heap at the floor. “Neither of you are asking the right questions.”
Campbell edged a step forward. “She’s in there? Varina?”
“Campbell!”
“Campbell!” Legion repeated aloud, its voice a terrifying falsetto. The sound of breaking glass cracked the air, and Varina saw the windows on either side of the backdoor punch free. “Oh yes,” the demon continued, “she’s in here. A great disappointment, if you ask me.” It kicked its foot at the unmoving body on the ground. “After all this time, she still lacks the answers. Never was very bright, sadly. Didn’t ask the right questions.”
“Questions?” Campbell asked, braving another step. “What questions?”
“Ah, but these aren’t for you.” Legion shook its head. “Nice try.”
“What questions?” Varina screamed. The words went nowhere.
“Oh, so now you’re interested?”
“What is Lina doing here?”
“The same thing she’s been trying to do since you got here, I daresay. She wanted to know if you found out what your father knew in the end.”
“And what did my father know?”
“The answer to your question. You remember the question, don’t you? I remember you crying. Pleading with your little girl mind, shedding your little girl tears, and begging the good lord above to intervene on your behalf. You wondered why you were chosen. What evil you had done. Why I had been allowed into your life.” Legion went quiet for a beat, and she felt its satisfaction. “The answer is simple, sweetie. I was invited.”
An eternity might have passed in the time it took for the demon’s message to truly hit home. Varina was so divorced from her body she couldn’t experience numbness. She imagined her pulse racing, and felt phantom whispers across skin she had been shoved too deep inside to feel. And when it sank in—really sank in—a hot, burning rage unlike any she had ever experienced exploded from some center of her being, transforming her into a red mass of hate. Every scar she’d earned, every drop of blood she’d spilled, every scream that had rendered her throat raw merged and exploded.
“Oh yes,” Legion said. “That’s more like it.”
She felt herself shake as the demon spoke aloud, but Varina didn’t pay attention to the words, or to Campbell’s reply. She remained fixed in a world in-between, knowledge lighting up previously dark corners of her mind.
In terrible ways, it made sense. A twisted sort of Wicked Witch of the West logic. She could almost see the line of reasoning and hear the things Lina had told herself in order to remain absolved of wrongdoing in her own eyes. Because Lina wouldn’t do something like this if she didn’t think it was the right thing deep down. She wouldn’t…
Yet this was the woman who had thrown Varina out of her home for bringing the devil into it. For endangering the family. For being irredeemable in every sense of the word.
Perhaps it was good she didn’t have control of her body, else she might have thrown up.
“You really should feel this, Superbia,” Legion rumbled, the words piercing the fog Varina had wandered in to. “Our girl is righteously pissed. It’s delicious.”
The ball of fire in Campbell’s palm was now the size of a globe. “I’m warning you, Legion. Get the fuck out of her now.”
Varina felt the demon pause, then crack another of those lip-splitting smiles. “Warning me?” it echoed. “With what do you think to threaten me? The body is mine. You will not harm it, and I will not leave it. Varina is entertaining company, but she can leave anytime she chooses.”
“Why now?” Campbell barked. “Why not last night?”
“Well, last night was fun for a host of other reasons, wasn’t it?” The demon chuckled. ”I told you—you were here to do my work for me. Wear her down, and damn, did you ever perform. Thank you for that. I can say with certainty that I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Something flashed behind Campbell’s eyes. “Lucifer will have your head. He’ll give you one just to rip it off.”
“Lucifer again?” Legion snickered. “Your appeals to authority grow tiresome, little Sin. Lucifer would not hesitate to end the life of a human to capture me, and you know it. After all, what would the sacrifice be? She goes on to eternal life or something like it. No harm done, except to you. I believe your loss would be classified as an acceptable casualty.”
“Casualty?” Varina forced the last of her attention back to the present, though her anger continued its low simmer. “What’s going to happen to Campbell?”
Legion didn’t answer. Instead, it said aloud, “Aw, precious. She’s worried about you. Delicate thing, human emotions. Here I thought she’d want to see your head served on one of those divine Old Paris platters. Shame, but the heart wants what it wants.”
Campbell didn’t take the bait. Instead, he moved forward another step, a soft light entering his eyes. “Varina, if you can hear me, I’m coming. I’m gonna get you out. Okay?”
The demon scoffed and kicked Lina hard in the gut. “If you let her out,” Legion said slowly, “she’ll have to pretend not to enjoy this…”
It planted Varina’s booted foot on Lina’s throat and added just enough pressure that the woman’s eyes shot open. Their gazes met before Lina’s went wide with some of the rawest fear Varina had ever seen. She couldn’t wince or look away, nor could she deny the sick twist of something akin to satisfaction. The part of her that was as shriveled and ugly as she imagined Legion was in its native form.
The demon’s voice echoed proudly in her head. “Atta girl.”
Campbell yelled, “Don’t—”
But it was too late. Legion twisted Varina’s foot, and the air split with a horrible crack. Lina’s expression went slack, her eyes glossy, and when Legion pulled back, the woman’s head lolled forward at an ugly, unnatural angle.
The twisted satisfaction melted instantly, replaced with a surge of horror.
Oh my god.
“Poor Lina never learned a simple truth.” Legion stepped back and nudged Varina’s stepmother with the toe of her boot. “I form no loyalties. Since you’re giving me your body, this was the least I could do.”
“You’re sick.”
“Wrong again. I performed a community service. You know what she did now. Will you truly mourn her?”
“She didn’t know what she was doing.”
The defense came from nowhere, unfounded and wrong—she knew—but goddamn, she clung to it. She needed to cleanse herself of the sickness gnawing at the center of her being, eradicate the image of her stepmother’s neck snapping like weak wood.
“She knew,” Legion retorted. “She knew when she began the search—ways to get the meddlesome first child out of the picture. She knew when she started dabbling in local lore, found herself on the doorstep belonging to a voodoo priestess, and offered fifty thousand dollars to anyone who could help her solve a problem like Varina. She knew when she doodled in your little bible, and she knew when I arrived. And when your father discovered the truth, when he went to such lengths to find you, to bring you home, she knew it was only a matter of time before you came to collect.”
Varina kept her focus on Lina’s body, on the abnormal bend in her neck. Her emotional tide had become too complicated to track, so she gave up trying.
Whatever fight she’d had left had been benched. What she could feel of her body was distant and wrong, and she didn’t care for the rest.
“Did she kill him?” Varina loathed to ask the demon anything, but this she needed to know. “Did Lina kill my father?”
Legion chuckled again, that low horrible sound she felt she was doomed to hear for the rest of eternity. “Of course not. That was me.”
The thing wearing Varina’s skin stumbled, its satisfied smirk twisting into a grimace. Campbell pulled his attention from the body on the ground, willing his nerves to jump back online. He felt strangely detached from himself, as though watching from a distance. It had been the snap that had done it—that awful crack of bone, and the light behind the human’s eyes had gone out. Not a slow fade, but instant. One second here, the next vanished. For this particular human, the story continued somewhere else.
Life was that simple. Here, then gone.
Even for beings like him.
Campbell was dimly aware of how hard he breathed, the aching in his chest as he gulped down lungfuls of air. The fireball dancing in his palm warmed his hand, but not much else. His stomach had bunched, familiar inky black fear tightening his chest and sending shards of ice through his veins.
No. Not now. You can’t lose your shit now.
Legion shook its head, ribbons of fiery hair framing its face. “Oh my, she did not take that well.”
Campbell focused, planting his feet in the present and shoving aside his growing panic. “You killed someone using her body,” he snapped. “You think she’s gonna take that?”
“This little girl has more blood on her hands than you can imagine, Sin. The life of one insignificant human hardly matters, now does it?” Legion smirked again. “Or two, as the case may be.”
“Two?”
“The dear just discovered what happened to her father.”
Campbell’s spine went ramrod straight. He didn’t want to ask—didn’t want to give the demon the satisfaction.
And, he realized, he didn’t need to. He already knew. A man sick with cancer would be an easy target for a Hell Demon, particularly at the scene of a past possession.
Jenning Jefferson hadn’t stood a chance.
If Legion was disappointed the bait had been ignored, it didn’t let on. Instead, its smile grew. “Do you know why children make the best puppets?” it said, its voice like silk. “Their little minds are undeveloped and wide open to a world of possibility. When I start to whisper in their ears, they don’t fear. They don’t close down. They talk back, tell me all about themselves. Teenagers are almost as tasty. They have more hard edges, sure, but all that delicious angst means their minds are almost always open, and they have so many dark places for me to sneak inside. Varina was always a special case, see. All those walls up at such a young age, clumsy as they were. But she managed it—she shook me, and
then she started working. Building herself a fortress the likes of which few demons would ever attempt.” It tilted its head. “Then along came you.”
Campbell clenched his jaw and willed himself not to react. With effort, he closed his fist, the fireball disappearing in a wisp of smoke. There was no need for it—as long as Legion was wrapped in Varina’s flesh, they both knew he wouldn’t attack.
“You did what I thought none could,” Legion continued. “I thank you for that, truly.”
The words hit something deep, something that made his chest ache. The pragmatist in his mind warned that this was what Legion did—twisted nuggets of truth until they were so intertwined with reality that it was near impossible to pry them apart. Campbell knew that as well as anyone, but knowledge didn’t stop the remark from hitting its target. He felt it still, a hollowed ringing in his chest near where the fear resided. That shrieking nuisance that shook him from the inside out, threatening to pull him under an ever-growing tidal wave, threatening to drown him entirely.
Because Legion was right. Varina had been made vulnerable because of Campbell. Because of the lies he’d told, the stories he’d half-truthed, the things he’d done to get close to her. Things his assignment hadn’t called for, things he’d done just because he’d wanted to.
Varina had spent her life not allowing anyone in. When she’d opened herself to him, he’d taken the gift that was her trust and shattered it.
And the crazy thing was, he loved her. He’d done that to someone he loved. It hadn’t been intentional and some of it hadn’t been under his control, but he hadn’t put up much of a fight. He’d let the lie work for him while it could and waited, knowing she would be devastated when she found out. But that had been too unpleasant to consider, so he’d shoved it aside, let himself enjoy her—knowing she believed something that wasn’t true.
Campbell swallowed hard. “You’re right.”
The smile on Legion’s face fell a hair. “Excuse me?”
Deliverance from Sin: A Demonic Paranormal Romance (Sinners & Saints Book 5) Page 26