by L. C. Davis
Somehow, we ended up on the floor of his tent, his jacket on the ground underneath my head and my shirt in tatters from his claws. So he could shift partially. That revelation would have alarmed me under normal circumstances, especially as his teeth bloodied my neck, but I was too drunk on the taste of him to care. The first time we had made love was awkward and passionate and new and exploratory, but this time, it felt like we’d only ever separated to come together again. It was inevitable and reckless and perfect, and for the first time, I knew Nick was mine the way I’d always been his.
Twenty-Six
HOLDEN
When I woke, I hadn’t magically transformed into a dragon or gone through any other changes stereotypically associated with the mythological creature I was supposedly in the process of becoming. Other than feeling a bit more awake than I usually did when my eyes first popped open, I felt...normal.
Until I remembered where I was and realized Locke was gone. I dressed quickly and left the room, heading down the hall in search of the incubus. The sound of moaning carried from downstairs, and with the notable exception of Locke fingering Alois on the bar, the place was empty.
I froze at the foot of the stairs, warring with myself as to whether I should make my presence known or turn and head back the way I’d come. Before I could decide, Locke’s eyes met mine and they shone with mischief in the overhead lighting. He kept finger-fucking the bartender without missing a beat, dragging his long tongue along the other man’s jugular. I felt a curious blend of jealousy and arousal as I watched the incubus lap up the pale red energy hovering visibly over Alois’ glistening skin and I wasn’t sure which reaction alarmed me more.
My breath caught in my throat as the bartender gasped sharply and arched into Locke’s touch as he came. I watched as Locke breathed the twin streams of Kundalini in through his nostrils, his tongue darting out over his lips as if to savor the last vestiges of it. Alois noticed my presence and sobered quickly, grabbing a napkin to clean himself up with.
“I didn’t realize we had company,” he said with a nervous laugh.
“Sorry,” I coughed, walking the rest of the way down the stairs. Locke watched me in deep amusement as he licked his long fingers clean.
“I was just thanking Alois for his hospitality,” he purred.
“I can see that. Locke, can I speak with you for a moment?”
“I should prepare for the dinner rush,” Alois said hastily, zipping his fly before he disappeared into the back room.
Locke leaned on the counter, stretching out languidly. “We should be heading back soon, don’t you think?”
“That’s it?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow. “We’re not going to talk about what happened last night?”
“We fucked, you broke the first seal, AKA me, and now you’ve officially traded your V-card for Whoredom. What more is there to discuss?”
I frowned. “Nothing...I guess.”
“You’re not upset about Alois, are you?” he asked, cocking his head.
“No.”
“Hmm.” He pursed his lips. “You know, I have to feed on sexual energy. Especially if I’m going to get us home.”
“And how are you planning to do that?”
“All you need to do is contract with me again.”
“What we did last night doesn’t count?”
“That broke the first seal,” he replied, running a hand down my chest. “That makes me yours, but there’s still the matter of you not belonging to me anymore. That means I can’t access your power or my human form on Earth.”
“Right. Okay, so how do we do that?”
“That depends,” he purred, tilting my chin toward him. “Are you actually going to work with me this time? Are we going to stop Lucifer together, or are you going to keep fighting me?”
“You’re not the enemy,” I said, cornering him against the counter. Surprise flickered in his gaze and I smiled. “But if I do this again, no more secrets. We’re on equal terms.”
“There are things I can’t tell you,” he said carefully. “Things I promised I wouldn’t.”
“Fine. No new secrets.”
“Does that go both ways?”
“Yes.”
He seemed to be considering it. “We have a deal.”
“Not yet.”
Locke tilted his head. “What do you mean?”
I kissed him and while the future didn’t flash before my eyes this time like it had the first, I actually felt like I had some control over it. When I opened my eyes, we were standing on the edge of a cliff that looked like a scene from a seaside painting, only all the colors were flipped. The sky was a dark, tepid green and the grass was the color of the blood-red moon. At first, I thought the churning black expanse below the cliff was an ocean, but the erratic flashes of electricity within the monochromatic mass made me realize they were clouds rather than water.
“Where are we?”
“Hell’s apex,” Locke replied boredly, nodding over the ledge. “That’s the way home.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Afraid not. You didn’t think getting out of Hell would be as easy as getting in, did you?”
“You can’t come and go?”
“Nope. I bought a one-way ticket into this place and I was counting on finding you to get out.”
“Me? How am I supposed to get us home?”
“Remember when I told you only two fallen angels ever kept their wings?”
“Yeah…”
“Lucifer’s one, you’re the other.”
“I’m not Adam anymore. I don’t have wings.”
“Only one way to find out.”
The look in his eyes told me everything I needed to know about his horrid plan. “Locke, no, we --” He grabbed my hand and pulled me to his chest, sending us both over the edge of the cliff. I screamed as we barreled down through the black clouds. The darkness that enveloped us was briefly illuminated by a brilliant flash of gold lightning. I buried my face in Locke’s chest, too terrified to feel the appropriate amount of rage toward him. We fell for what felt like forever and the blackness gave way to what felt like fire. A portal covered in blue haze danced below us and panic surged in my chest. “What the fuck is that?” I cried, wondering how I could even still breathe.
“Earth,” he replied nonchalantly, his arms wound tightly around me. “If you could remember how to use your wings before we hit the atmospheric barrier, that would be great.”
“We just came from Hell! How the fuck is Earth below us?”
“Do you really want to know?” he challenged.
“No! Fuck, I can’t do this, I --” Just when I was sure we’d hit the barrier and break into space dust or whatever the hell happened when you fell to Earth, a golden white light eclipsed my vision. I clung to Locke, crying out in agony as bony structures tore from my skin. One moment, we were plummeting and the next, my wings were cocooning us. I looked up, barely able to see Locke through the glow with his head thrown back, laughing in ecstatic madness.
At least one of us was enjoying this. For a moment, it felt like we’d stopped falling altogether, but the sickly rush of falling in a dream soon bled into the weightlessness and I realized we were falling fast. Before I could ask him how to stop, the light blinded me again and ringing filled my ears before the deafening boom of impact.
Everything went silent.
~
Every inch of my body hummed and buzzed with energy that bordered on agony. I staggered to my feet and made it a single step before I collapsed. Tatters of cloth from my torn shirt fell around my arms. My vision blurred. I was in a crater so deep I could barely see over the edge. A hand reached out and Locke came into focus, green eyes soft with amusement.
He was back to his usual self with no horns, and the blue glow of his complexion had turned back to albinistic white. I took his hand and he pulled me up, his skin frigid to the touch in contrast to my own flesh, still burning and glowing faintly from whatever fire it
was that had overtaken me. My wings were gone. My ruined shirt was the only evidence they had ever been there.
“What the fuck was that?”
“That was the second time you fell to Earth,” he said dryly. “How’s it feel?”
I thought about it for a second. “Overly theatrical. Where are we, anyway?” I asked, looking around the open field.
“On the outskirts of Stillwater. The more pertinent question is when?”
“Okay, when are we?”
He shrugged, walking toward a hill in the distance. “Only one way to find out.”
As I followed Locke, it began to set in that I was back on Earth and had no idea what was waiting for me. I’d never imagined I would be coming back, let alone to Stillwater, and in order to leave, I’d done things that could never be undone. Things that would surely have consequences now that I was back.
“Oh. Looks like we made it in time for a party.”
“What party?” I asked, stopping beside Locke at the top of the hill. I recognized the back end of the Whitaker estate looming in the distance, and a small group was gathered just outside the garden. Whatever they had been doing had clearly been interrupted by our fall, and everyone was staring at the sky like they were waiting for more meteors to rain down. When we moved a bit closer, I realized it was the entirety of the Whitaker clan, and they were all wearing suits and dresses. Even Nick was wearing a black tux. He stood next to Daniel and a man I didn’t recognize. Once I got close enough to realize the white band around the stranger’s neck was a priest collar, the context of the intimate gathering made a bit more sense.
I stood frozen and Nick’s eyes met mine from across the field. Locke and I hadn’t fallen with nearly as much force as the realization that hit me in that moment. The look on Daniel’s face erased any doubt in my mind. It wasn’t just a random gathering our fall from the fiery heavens had interrupted. It was a wedding.
Twenty-Seven
DANIEL
The Whitakers didn’t do anything halfway, and that included weddings. I would have been perfectly happy with the papers Nick and I had signed at the courthouse earlier that week, but the pack needed something formal and I was just relieved Nick had managed to talk Carla out of inviting the whole town. Standing in front of a priest while Tiffany Whitaker gave me the side eye was awkward enough.
And then Nick took my hand and read his vows and nothing else mattered. I was marrying my best friend, and when he looked at me the way he was then, it was almost easy to forget how we’d ended up there. That this was a matter of formality and satisfying pack custom rather than something that would have happened on its own. When we kissed, it was so easy to convince myself that this was inevitable. That this was the ending that was always meant to be. A long-delayed happily ever after I’d never even dared to dream about and was still terrified I’d wake up from.
The flash of light that lit the twilight sky and the deafening impact that left my ears ringing felt like an otherworldly end to an impossible dream, but when the light faded and the panic gave way to confusion, Nick was still standing at my side, surrounded by the pack that had gathered to celebrate our union with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
When I saw Holden appear with Locke, my heart sank -- not because I wasn’t relieved to see him, but because I knew it was a dream. I knew it wasn’t real. How could any of it be? As if Nick wanting me wasn’t unreal enough, Holden was back from a fate more permanent than death?
I didn’t know what kind of stupor I’d fallen into to come up with a dream or a hallucination like this, but I was never going to touch the stuff again once I did wake up.
Except I didn’t. One moment, Holden was across the hillside and the next he was there with us, and the look on Nick’s face said he was living his own dream. His jaw hung slack as he stared at the witch and worked like he was trying to speak but couldn’t quite come up with the words. “Holden?”
“What have we here?” Locke asked, looking around with keen eyes full of curiosity. “A summer wedding? How quaint.”
“What the hell was that?” Carla cried. “It felt like an explosion, are you two alright?”
“It was just a… uh… thing,” Holden said without breaking eye contact with Nick. Neither of them had so much as blinked in the last minute.
“We thought you were gone,” Carla breathed.
“Yes,” Lucas said stiffly, coming to stand beside her. “We were quite certain of it.”
Nick said nothing. He didn’t blink, he didn’t speak, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t even breathing. Just...staring. Like he was looking at a ghost. To be fair, that would have made a hell of a lot more sense, especially considering the fact that we were in Stillwater.
Locke looked over the gathering and came to a stop in front of me, rubbing the lapel of my tux between his fingers. “Italian silk. Oh,” he said, his eyes widening as if he was just putting it together. He looked at me, cocked his head and pulled the collar away from my neck. I batted his hand away, but I knew he’d seen the mark. “Ohhhhh.”
Lucas whispered something to Carla and she nodded reluctantly, leading the rest of the group back towards the house. I was left with Nick, Lucas, and two people who shouldn’t even be in the same dimension.
“How?” It was the first word Nick had spoken since his vows and his voice was rough with something that might as easily have been anger as relief. “You were...you left.”
Holden’s face melted in guilt. He finally broken from Nick’s gaze to look at me and swallowed audibly. “It’s a long story.”
“So start fucking telling it,” Nick growled. “I thought you were gone. I grieved you. I searched for months, I hunted, I killed, I tracked down every demon in a hundred mile radius just trying to get answers, and you were fucking gone.”
Some of that was news to me, but I was still reeling from the shock too badly to focus on it. My ears were still ringing.
“I know,” Holden said softly. “Nick, I’m so sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing. When Lilith sent us back, I thought I finally had a chance to put things right, I --”
“Lilith?” Nick frowned. “What are you talking about? Sent you back where?”
Holden froze and looked warily at me, his eyes wide. “I thought you’d told him…”
“Told me what?” Nick demanded, looking at me. “Daniel? What’s he talking about?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing would come out at first. “I…”
“Married for all of five minutes and the secrets are already coming out,” Locke said giddily. “How scandalous. I love small-town drama. It’s so tasty.”
“Locke,” Holden said in a warning tone.
The demon rolled his eyes but he backed off. Whatever had happened while they were gone, something had changed between them. I could feel it. Holden was different. He didn’t look different, but there was something in his eyes, something that hadn’t been there when he’d left.
“Keeping up with two timelines is going to be too much of a headache,” Locke chided. “Better for it all to come out now.”
“Timelines?” Lucas frowned. “What the fuck are you going on about? And how are you back?” he demanded, turning to Holden.
Holden said nothing. He looked at me like he wasn’t sure what it was safe to say. I wasn’t sure, either. Locke was right. I’d been part of the Whitaker family for less than a day and already, keeping secrets was becoming second nature. I’d told myself it was to make things easier for Nick, but now that I was face to face with the one person left from the reality I’d come from, I wondered if that had ever been true or if that was just what I’d told myself to make things easier for me.
“Something happened,” I said carefully. “Before he left, Holden and I did something that changed the past. I mean, it changed now...I think…”
“What Daniel is trying to say in the clumsiest way possible is that he and Holden were sent back and they used the opportunity to avert a tragic event that would have
changed your lives forever,” Locke purred. “In doing so, they nearly ruined my plan to stop Lucifer and save Earth, but yours truly set it all right and we’re back on schedule for Doomsday, so all’s well that ends well. Is there cake? I love wedding cake.”
“Is that true?” Nick demanded, looking at me. “You knew about this and you didn’t tell me?”
I swallowed hard. “I changed it…”
“Changed what?” he snapped. “What did you change, Daniel?”
“My mistake!” Holden cried. “Daniel didn’t have anything to do with it, he just got caught up in it, as usual. Nick, you don’t remember any of this because that’s the way I wanted it to be. The night of the festival, while you were with the pack, something awful was supposed to happen that didn’t because I got the chance to go back and fix it. I made a terrible, selfish mistake that got Daniel and Brent killed. It ruined your life, and it ended theirs.”
Nick shook his head and I could see him struggling to process Holden’s words. He looked to me finally, pleading. “Is that true?”
All I could do was nod.
“I went back to the night of the festival to keep myself from making that mistake so Daniel and Brent could live, and so you wouldn’t get any more wrapped up with me than you already were,” Holden said quietly. “Then I left. Daniel tried to stop me, but I just wanted to undo all the terrible things I’ve caused since I came here.”
“Wrapped up?” Nick snarled. “You think I wasn’t already wrapped up when I imprinted on you? When you fucking took off and I had to live with thinking you were gone, forever? That wasn’t supposed to fuck up my life?”
“Not as badly as it would have if I’d stayed,” Holden said firmly. “When I left in this timeline, things were so much different. I knew it would hurt, but you’d get over it,” he said pointedly, looking at me. “You’d have him.”
“I do, but that doesn’t excuse the shit you pulled. Or the fact that you got Daniel involved in it.“
“Alright, we need to go inside,” said Lucas. “If either one of you wants back in my town, you’re going to explain yourselves.”