by Liz Meldon
He exhaled sharply when Severus slammed his fist into his gut. Aeneas folded over, smiling as blood dribbled between his parted lips. Trembling, Moira looked between Malachi and Severus, then back to Cordelia; all three demons wore a near-identical expression.
Shock.
Then disgust.
“What is it?” she asked, hating the way her voice had gone all screechy and strangled. Standing near Ella, Alaric was on the phone, speaking quietly and quickly to whoever was on the other end. No sign of his daytime handler. And no sign of an immediate answer from any of the three. “What is—”
“It’s a parasite from Hell,” Severus told her softly—gently, breaking the news as though she might fall apart once she heard it. “It passes through fluid exchange. It… It births its young in the host’s body, and they eat their life essence until it’s gone. Then they eat the host.”
“It’s said to be a very painful way to die,” Malachi added, twisting Aeneas’s arm so hard this time that it broke. The fallen angel gave a shout of pain. Trying to process the information, trying to see straight, Moira dragged her fingers through her loose white locks, eyes wide as they looked to Ella. Tears rolled down her friend’s cheeks, but she hadn’t lowered her gun. It held firm and level, pointed right at Aeneas’s head once Malachi dragged him upright again.
“She knew the r-rules,” Aeneas gasped out, face contorted as though fighting to swallow the pain, to stay nonchalant. “I p-paid for her silence, and she broke it. There are c-consequences for those who break the rules.”
“Fucking hypocrite,” Severus hissed.
Her teeth were chattering. Moira clenched her jaw to still them, but she couldn’t stop the rest of the tremors, not as a hurricane of emotion hammered her from all sides.
“Are you going to kill me, child?” Aeneas crooned, sucking back the blob of bloody saliva pluming at the edge of his mouth. Their eyes met, and he grinned with a deranged chuckle. “Like father, like daughter. Are you strong enough to—”
Moira pressed her hands to her mouth when Severus snapped his neck.
Gone was the grin. Dead was the laughter. Together, Severus and Malachi tore Aeneas’s head from his shoulders, Malachi pushing the body down, Severus ripping the head up, and she listened to every last awful second of it. To the sound of bones breaking, flesh tearing—to the eventual thud of his head on the grass.
That thud had a strange, yet welcome sense of finality to it.
Shaking, her mind empty, she stumbled across the soft grassy field—right into Ella’s arms. Her best friend caught her, knees buckling when Moira didn’t hold herself back, and they both tumbled to the ground. Ella exhaled a sob, clinging to her, squeezing her like Moira was about to disappear too. To finally know the truth—well, maybe she ought to be bawling too. But for the first time in a long time, no tears welled. No breakdown loomed. She wasn’t sucked into a storm of despair.
Moira was finally free.
She rubbed Ella’s back, shifting about so they sat side by side. Her best friend pressed the backs of her hands into her eyes, shuddering, and Moira carefully pried the gun away. She handed it off to a nearby Alaric, who met her eye with an unreadable look. Things had been odd between them after he’d gone through hybrid puberty. His vibration was different—but he was different, too. Alaric had presence now. She couldn’t explain it. Couldn’t really describe it if you asked her to, but there was weight behind his stare.
With a nod, Moira offered him a small smile of thanks, then cuddled Ella to her as her best friend’s sobs quieted.
“It’s not that I’m unhappy to see you guys,” Moira said after a long silence, looking between the trio loitering nearby. Severus, meanwhile, was in the process of dragging Diriel’s charred remains across the field, setting them next to her dad’s. Moira cleared her throat, suddenly lightheaded. “It’s just… Why are you here?”
“We had a suspicion that once you left the city limits, you might run into trouble,” Malachi told her, hands in the pockets of his grey slacks, his gaze resting on Ella. “Diriel would likely want revenge, your father too. After all, you are their common enemy.”
“We’ve been tailing you,” Alaric added. “We just wanted to make sure you guys got to the resort in one piece.”
“Well, thank you. Really. You guys are the best backup squad a girl could ask for.” She kissed Ella’s temple, then spit out a mouthful of curls when the wind turned against her. Ella sat up with a watery laugh and pushed her mane out of the way. Over her shoulder, Moira spotted the destroyed BMW. “I’m sorry about the car, Alaric. I’ll buy you a new one.”
Alaric waved her off, grinning as Cordelia wrapped her arms around his trim waist. His arm curved around her shoulders, the hybrid openly affectionate with her at last. “Don’t worry about it. I wasn’t very keen on that particular model anyway.”
“Still, I’ll get you a new—”
“Moira, I have insurance.” He leaned closer and whispered conspiratorially, “And a trust fund. It’s really not a problem.”
She laughed, but it sounded hollow, even to her own ears, and she tracked Severus as he strode over and offered her and Ella a hand each.
“Come on, darling.” He gripped her tight when she slid her hand into his, whereas Ella gingerly grasped his elbow. Within seconds he had them both lifted to their feet. “Let’s just go home.”
“No, don’t.” Ella shook her head, still fighting the wind, the humidity adding some extra oomph to her curls. Tear tracks cut through her makeup. “You guys should still go to the resort. If anyone needs a week away to deal with all this, it’s the both of you. Seriously.”
“Take the SUV,” Alaric insisted when both Moira and Severus started to protest. He dug the key out of his pocket and handed it to Severus, who accepted with a bewildered look. “Roan is ten minutes out with my father’s cleanup crew. We’ll wait for them and sort all this out. Really.”
Severus looked to Moira, his eyebrows up, an unspoken question hanging between them. Should we go?
Could she really just carry on to the resort and spend a week being pampered after all of—this? She had her answers now. She knew who both her parents were, and that her dad had arranged for her mom to die. She knew where she fit in this supernatural world, though she still needed some help with her newfound powers—but that was what Zachariah was for.
“We…” Moira shook her head, unable to conjure the words to argue against it. “Okay. Let’s go, I guess.”
“What do you want us to do with his body?”
She knew Malachi was referring to Aeneas. Headless and broken, he still looked more human than Diriel. Another bout of dizziness hit her, stomach looping too, just for good measure, and she grabbed Ella’s hand.
“Burn it,” she said tersely, tightly. “Just get rid of it.”
She wasn’t sure if a fallen angel could come back from an injury like that, but Moira had no intention of taking that chance.
Did that make her callous—or proactive?
Still clutching Ella’s hand, she turned, and the pair headed toward the SUV. Severus walked along beside her, exhaustion etched across his features in the bags under his eyes, in the clench of his jaw, in the lightness of his irises. He needed this week at the resort. The slice across his abdomen had stopped bleeding, but the giant stab wound on his arm needed some attention.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he said when he caught her staring. “It’s nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive, darling.” And for the first time since she had walked him out of Seraphim Securities, Moira actually believed him. While he seemed tired, there was a strength in the way he carried himself now, in the way he studied her. “How are you feeling? You lost consciousness for a moment back there.”
“I feel…” Moira swallowed hard. “I feel everything and nothing.”
“Well,” Severus jogged up the little hill leading to the road, then offered a hand to her from the top, “I think we can work w
ith everything and nothing.”
Moira nodded, then let him help her and Ella up. She was about to ask for the keys, but then thought better of it. No sense in crashing two of Alaric’s cars in one day.
After Severus opened the passenger-side door for her, he strode back down to the grassy field, headed straight for the others. She watched, slumped down on the leather seat, as he conversed with Malachi for a moment, then Alaric, before the trio pulled their luggage from the wreckage. With both bags slung over his shoulder, Severus left, but not before giving them both a friendly, noticeably affectionate clap on the shoulder. It was nice to see—familial bonding.
Over the death of her father.
Moira ran her shaky hands through her hair, once again noticing the cuts on her arms, her busted knuckles. Strange. She couldn’t feel the pain anymore. Adrenaline—that had to be it. In an hour or two, she’d be in a world of hurt. A quick check in the side mirror showed her more cuts and bruises across her face, but she couldn’t feel those either.
What she could feel were Ella’s tears. They had started up silently again, and she caught their reflection in the mirror. As Severus hurried back up the hill, Moira slid out of the front seat and pulled her best friend into another hug.
“Are you sure you want me to go? I don’t have to. I can stay. I should stay.” Her breath hitched. “I should stay, and…and…”
“No, go. Grieve somewhere luxurious,” Ella whispered back, squeezing tight. “I’ll be okay. It’s just…a lot.”
“It is.” They pulled apart, and Moira wiped her friend’s tears away. “But now we know.”
Now they could finally rest.
Ella nodded. “Now we know.”
After one long, tight, final hug, she hopped back into the SUV, the engine roaring to life. With their bags in the backseat, the air-conditioning on high, and their last real threats dead, some semblance of a summer vacation could begin at last.
As they pulled away from the accident site, Moira reached over and fisted her hand in the fabric of Severus’s white tee, then settled back into her seat. Then, and only then, in a great and sudden storm, did she finally allow her tears to fall.
Chapter Ten
Before all this, Severus couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a waterfall.
He had visited some of the greats in his lifetime. Victoria Falls. Niagara Falls. Skógafoss. Yosemite Falls. Jog Falls. Severus had traveled before humans figured out how to make it easy—before they had truly started to evolve. Yet all those other falls paled in comparison to Grey Falls.
The waterfall just beyond the balcony of his and Moira’s cabin wasn’t extraordinary by any means. It was really rather simple. Plain. It plunged down from the edge of a clifftop into the deep blue pool below, where the streams would eventually carry the water out to the rivers, then the ocean. It couldn’t have been more than thirty, maybe forty feet.
But Grey Falls was his favourite waterfall, now and forever, because for five extraordinary days, it had greeted him each morning, and serenaded him each night. Not just him. Them.
Grey Falls had been there when he and Moira first arrived, bleary-eyed and spent, led by an elf from the main resort center. Grey Falls had soothed them on their hike through the well-maintained forest trails, past other cabins housing other supernatural beings desperate for an escape. It had greeted them as they set their luggage on the king-sized bed in the one-bedroom house, nestled on the gentle slope of the hill, surrounded by soaring pines and firs. It sang them to sleep that first night. It listened while they talked, while she cried.
A constant companion.
A forever friend.
Severus would never forget Grey Falls. He watched the water plummet over the rock face, even now, five days into the seven, because it brought him peace.
Because it had brought her peace, sitting out on the balcony, a balcony encased in mosquito netting and laden with plush deck furniture. After she had cried all her tears that first night, grieving her mother’s death all over again, very suddenly, very viscerally, and after she had then spent nearly three hours on the phone with Ella, locked in the bathroom, they’d watched their first sunset right here, listening to the falls through the scattered forest around them, hands clasped loosely between their chairs.
He had already sketched it. Moira had even added colour to the charcoal, shading things over his shoulder, her chin nuzzled into the dip of his neck. He had also taken a few photos on his phone, so he could remember how he had felt over the last five days. Secure. Valued. Appreciated. Loved.
It was strange to feel all those sentiments at once—from one person, at that. Sometimes, when he was alone, now, for instance, he still wasn’t sure he was worthy of all that. Love. He wasn’t sure what he had done to deserve it, but Moira knew. She knew, and she had told him, and promised to keep telling him until he finally believed her.
He wasn’t sure why he had it, but he did. Severus Saevitia, incubus, escort, leech, had found love at long last.
And he would never let it go—never let her go—for the rest of his very long life.
He shifted on the padded deck chair, a glass mug of half-drunk local ale on the wide, flat armrest. Legs crossed at the ankles, he inhaled a full breath of fresh forest air. Shirtless. Today was the second day he’d dared to go without covering himself, the second day Moira could confirm that, in fact, his scars were nearly invisible. He had suspected she’d told a little white lie, that they were actually more apparent, all waxy and deep pink, than she let on. However, after she left for her appointment an hour ago, he had stared at himself in the bathroom mirror—and she hadn’t lied. Not one bit.
Whatever was in the water here, whatever was in the oil the resort staff used in their full-body massages, had really done the trick. So, he could sit out on the deck, shirtless, watching Grey Falls, without a fucking care in the world.
Without his damn back aching.
Without fearing for her, for her safety. He would always fret, always fuss, but since day two of this trip, he hadn’t feared for her. The sharp, twisting hurt in his heart at the thought of her going out alone, surrounded by enemies, had ebbed. Because they were safe here, at last, surrounded by supernatural beings who didn’t care that he was an incubus or she an angel hybrid. High elves from before the age of man, golden fae of the Seelie court, dryads from the days when pagan gods walked the earth—they were in the business of care.
For five glorious days, he and Moira had been cared for—by others, not just by one another.
He didn’t want to go back to Farrow’s Hollow. He didn’t give a shit that his demonic abilities were lesser here because they were so far from a hell-gate. Severus could live in this reality forever, just him and Moira, eating good food, getting massages and facials, and fucking the days away until sunrise the next morning, when they got to do it all over again.
They would have to return, of course. Only two days left. Severus smirked when he heard the front door unlocking.
Two more days in this paradise—and they really ought to make them count.
He downed the rest of his ale, then stood at the sound of his love bustling into the cabin. Clad in a yellow sheath dress, her hair wild and free, all her wounds from the car accident healed, Moira was an utter vision, made lovelier by the enormous smile on her face.
“I just had two fairies, literal fairies, do my nails, which was the most surreal experience of my life. It was awesome,” she announced, closing the door behind her and flicking the lock shut. He so loved that sound—the sound of her trapping herself inside with the demon. She deposited her sunglasses and key at the little table next to the door, then tossed her purse on the sprawling king-sized bed they had been making excellent use of lately.
While the cabin came equipped with a mini-fridge, kettle, and microwave, they had most of their meals delivered, or, if an appointment coincided with mealtime, they would dine up at the main lodge. Severus strode forward off the closed-in deck, then paused i
n the doorway of what was essentially just a luxurious bedroom ripe for fucking her in.
Moira kicked her sandals toward her luggage by the ensuite bathroom door, then faced him, her smile faltering when their eyes met. Faltering, very likely, because she saw the predatory gleam in his, the way they snapped to black at the mere sight of her. Arms swaying innocently at his sides, Severus prowled forward, mouth lifting into a smirk.
“They showed me their wings,” she added weakly. “They decorate them with, like, piercings and stuff, and they weren’t feathers at all, but more… Severus, stop.”
Moira pointed a finger at him, her eyes narrowing as he paused mid-stride, his body posed like a feline ready to pounce. She could refuse all she wanted—he saw the way she drank him in, shirtless, his torso and arm also healed from the wounds inflicted by Diriel’s knife. He was nearly back to normal now, flush and full of life essence courtesy of the generous resort staff, brimming with energy and in desperate need to expend it somewhere.
In desperate need to ravish her at all times.
“I just had my nails did.” Moira held up both hands, her lips pursed and her brows up as she showed off ten painted fingertips. “Do you see that? Coral. Perfectly done, unchipped coral. I practically walked with my arms out to make sure I didn’t wreck them on the way back.”
“They look dry to me—”
“I’m not risking it!” She planted those hands on her hips, fingers splayed. While she might have thought it a power pose, all it did was highlight the delectable hourglass figure hiding underneath that shapeless material. Severus licked his lips, eyes roving her body unchecked, his smirk turning positively sinful when their eyes met. Hers narrowed again. “You’re just going to have to wait…a bit.”
He straightened up and touched a finger to his chin, pausing for dramatic effect. His hum of consideration had her cheeks flushing bright pink, and he flashed a bit of teeth, just to make that blush darken.