Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series

by Holley Trent

  “Who are you talking to?” he whispered.

  She put her index finger up to her lips and shook her head. Into the phone, she said, “Around twenty-five. Officially, in a couple of days.”

  “Just checking.” John disconnected.

  Marion slid her thumb across the End button and held the phone out to Charles, who stood with his right hand extended.

  “That was your brother John.”

  The ruddy coloring he’d acquired from the hot shower seemed suddenly to leach all at once as his fingers tightened around the small black device. Maybe she’d stepped a little out of her bounds by answering his phone, but it wasn’t that big a deal, was it?

  “And what did John have to say?”

  She lifted her shoulders and pushed up to her knees, preparing to crawl to the edge of the bed. “It was a little weird, I guess. He asked me about America’s Most Wanted and wanted to know how old I was.”

  She could hear his loud swallow. Color returned to his face, but only to his cheeks.

  Why was he so agitated? Must have been some history there she was missing out on. Probably stepped in something she shouldn’t have.

  She slung her leg over the edge and pressed her right foot to the floor, testing her muscles for stability. The past couple of hours had been just that kind of wild, where she wasn’t sure if she was cable of walking straight, much less driving. Seemed safe enough, so she planted the other foot on the floor, too.

  Success!

  She walked to the bathroom for her second bathing experience of the day.

  “Why don’t you put that chicken in the oven?” she said before closing the door.

  The knob turned, and the door arced inward a moment later. Charles leaned into the door frame, and to his credit was looking in the general area of her head and not the rear end presented to the door as she fiddled with the shower knobs. “What else did he want?”

  She shrugged and drew the shower curtain open. “It was all pretty benign. Seemed curious about the lady answering your phone, is all.”

  His eyes narrowed and a muscle in his jaw twitched. Now he wasn’t watching her, but some spot on the tile behind her. She wasn’t sure if she liked this flavor of broodiness, but on the plus side, she’d be gone in a couple of hours. He could be weird and broody and gorgeous all by himself. She’d be on a plane. Alone.

  When the hot water met her aching muscles, it was hard not to think about the man who’d made them that way. A man who’d rocked her world so hard and so expertly, she’d never forget him. A man who’d bought her flowers and—

  She stood on her tiptoes to peer through the translucent part of the curtain at the man in the doorway, but he wasn’t there.

  “Fuck.” Why did her gut clench at him not being there?

  Because she didn’t want him to leave her alone. Weirdo or not.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Charles didn’t startle when he felt the disruption to his solitude in the bedroom. He didn’t even look up. Instinctively, he knew the new body in the room was John’s. He’d always recognize when close kin was near, even if they hadn’t met. Similarly, John could always come to him, no matter where he was. He couldn’t do it with all of his siblings and half-siblings, but they’d spent so much time together in the past year that they were probably connected more than most.

  Charles pushed one leg through his jeans and then the other, standing to pull them over his hips.

  John closed the distance between them, and put his hands at either side of Charles’s still-wet head, forcing his gaze up to meet his younger brother’s crazed one.

  “Clarissa is going to fucking kill you,” John whispered.

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

  “It’s been nice knowing you, Number Two. Ours has been a short relationship, but a memorable one. Love you. See you in the next life.”

  Charles swatted his hands away and bent to pick up his rumpled sweater. “You’re being overly dramatic. I wonder which parent you might have inherited that from. Hmm, let me think.” He tapped his index finger against his jaw in feigned contemplation.

  “I’m not.” John threw his hands up and paced. It was a habit he’d likely gleaned from Ariel and Clarissa. They were champion pacers. Probably burned off most of their excess calories that way. “I hope it was worth it. I can smell it, goddamn it. Fuck, Marion might get Claude to resurrect you so she can kill you, too.”

  “You know about his necromancy?”

  John narrowed his eyes to slits.

  Charles pulled the sweater over his head and brushed out a couple of the less resistant wrinkles. “I love her.”

  John stopped pacing and jabbed a finger in his brother’s direction. “You’re drinking again, aren’t you?”

  Charles closed his eyes and gave his head a slow, emphatic shake. “Stone-cold sober. She’s my match, John.”

  John’s eyes went round. “Shit. How long have you been hiding her?”

  “I caught up to her last night and brought her here this morning.”

  “Fuck. A day, man! A day? Match or not, you can’t fall in love in a day.”

  Charles sat on the bed’s edge and drew his first sock over his toes. “You did.”

  “That was different.”

  Charles paused and cast what he hoped was a speculative look at his half-brother. “Yes, it was very different. You were a virgin rube off the cult compound for the first time and fell in love with the first woman naïve enough to stop for a hitchhiker. Me? I’m more than a hundred years old, have screwed more women than I care to remember, and am descended from a love god on my mother’s side. If anyone’s capable of falling in love at the mere idea of a woman, it’d be me. Eventually, Cupid becomes his own victim.”

  John paced some more. “Oh my God. I knew something was up when she answered my questions sensibly. I figured you’d changed your mind about abstaining and had found a conquest, but she wasn’t drunk off the magic.”

  “She’s resistant to me for the moment because of her shielding. You should leave. She’ll be out of the shower soon and I need to put a chicken in the oven.”

  “Oh, I’m going to leave,” John said, the crazed look in his eyes having returned as he knelt toward Charles. He slapped his large hands onto Charles’s thighs. “I’m going to leave, all right, because I’m going to need a head start practicing my lies. I can’t lie to Ariel, and Clarissa would smell the hesitation on me from a quarter mile away. I’m not even going to tell her that you found her and held her back.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Oh no.” Now it was John’s turn to shake his head.

  Marion turned the water off in the shower, so John grasped his brother’s hand and transmitted telepathically—another new trick of John’s—No, I’m not going to tell because you’re bringing Marion home to her grandmother tonight, aren’t ya?

  Charles raised his shoulders to his ears and cringed. I was thinking more like tomorrow night.

  John’s eyes squeezed to narrow slits again. Tonight. Take the red-eye. Just this once, you need to listen to your little brother. Don’t try to cut it close. We don’t know when that shield is going to wear off, and it won’t be smart for you to be near her whether it’s on a plane, train, or in an automobile.

  The doorknob spun, and with a final glower of warning, John disappeared.

  Charles sighed and hated his little brother a bit for the moment, but he knew he was right.

  Marion stepped out of the bathroom, humming a jaunty little tune and giving him a wink as she sauntered toward her discarded clothes.

  His girl.

  And the safest place for his girl to be once that shield expired would be in the protection of her grandmother’s heavily ensorcelled home. The house was decked from foundation to lightning rod with symbols humans found spiritually significant. Furthermore, Claude had added some of his own magic to the property so no demon could enter the home without great peril. The place was virtually invisible to supernatural type
s unless they’d visited before or intended to do the little family no harm. And, of course, John was there. He wouldn’t let anything happen to Clarissa and Ariel on his watch. Just like Charles wasn’t going to let any harm come to Marion.

  He cleared his throat, and turned his knees to watch her dress. “Hey.”

  “Yeah? Dinner ready?”

  “No. Listen, John called me back. Something’s up with the family and they want me to fly out to help. Tonight.”

  She’d been rubbing beads of water from her short hair, but stopped, expression set with genuine concern. “Anything serious?”

  “No, they just need an extra pair of hands from someone they trust.”

  “Oh.”

  “Since you were going to fly south anyway, why don’t we start our journey together? I’ll escort you as far as Wilmington and you can spend the day in North Carolina while you make further arrangements.”

  She eyed him, wrenching the towel between her hands and shifting her weight.

  He waited for the brusque dismissal, struggling to keep his expression his usual unreadable mask.

  She tossed the towel toward the empty hamper. “Wilmington, huh? Didn’t realize there was an airport there.”

  He blew out the breath he’d been holding. “It’s regional.”

  “Oh. So, what’s that mean? No direct flights?”

  “Not likely.”

  “Okay.”

  They sat in silence for a while, then she shrugged and said, “Fine with me. So, about that chicken? Looking forward to a meal that’s kinda homemade. Didn’t realize how much I missed them, although the ones I had in foster homes growing up weren’t all that memorable to start with.”

  Well, she was going to love Clarissa, then. If Clarissa had ten bucks left to her name, she’d use it to feed someone. What she served may not be filet mignon, but it’d be good, filling, and made with love.

  “Right.” He stood and moved to the door, stopping in the doorway and turning back to add, “I’ll put it in the oven. Why don’t you go figure out what clothes or whatever you want to fly with? I wouldn’t worry about toiletries. You can get those on the other end.”

  “Aren’t you going to pack?”

  “Just what’s in my motorcycle bag. I travel light.”

  “Right.” She nodded and followed him out the door. They parted ways at the kitchen, where she pulled open the exterior door and he strode to the stove. While fidgeting with the knobs with his left hand, he plucked his phone from his pocket and dialed out with his right. Once he’d plugged the number in, he nudged the curtains over the sink aside and watched Marion’s pert derriere as she climbed into the truck’s cabin. She’d be a moment.

  “Number One?” He let the curtains fall back into place and eased to the refrigerator.

  Claude swore in French under his breath, and Charles imagined his big brother shaking a fist at him in his absence. He was as fluent in French as his brother, thanks to those semesters at Princeton, so he knew whom the disparaging jabs were intended for.

  “Look, I already got the lecture from John. I don’t have time to get it from you, too. We’re trying to fly out tonight. I want to transfer some cash for you to give to Clarissa. Don’t tell her where it came from. Just tell her you got it through your usual means. I know when we show up tomorrow she’s going to want to run out and clear the shelves at Piggly Wiggly, and I’d hate for her to break open her rainy-day fund.”

  “And where’d you’d get the cash?”

  Charles ignored the question. He took the plastic lid off the chicken and slid it into the oven. After one more check of the window to verify Marion was still moving around inside the truck, he said, “Listen, I didn’t finish telling you about my meeting with Pop. Marion could hear me, so I had to hash my words.”

  “What did you leave out?”

  “He challenged me to a bit of a propagation foot race, and I refused.”

  “I bet he took that well.”

  “As well as you’d imagine. Instead of leaving well enough alone, he’s decided to punish me. He’s going to sic Ross on me as an overseer.”

  Claude swore in that French patois he’d spoken as a child in Louisiana again.

  “Tell me about it,” Charles said. “That’s certainly going to put a crimp in my style.”

  “And mine. And John’s. And—”

  Charles raked a hand through his hair and sighed. “Yeah, yeah. I get it. Everyone I care about. I guess there’s something to be said for being a loner. Didn’t have these problems before John ushered us into this happy family shit.”

  Claude laughed. “And are you happy?”

  Charles shoved the corkscrew he’d found into the wine bottle’s stopper and turned. He didn’t have to think about it, really. He was getting happier by the minute, and the source of it was rooting around in her purple truck for clean clothes. “Yeah. Happier than I’ve been since I was a kid. You know how long ago that was.”

  “Must say I’m jealous.”

  “I would be, too. Tell me where to wire the money and I’ll take care of it on the way to the airport. We’ll deal with the Ross problem when I’m on the ground in North Carolina. I have an idea that may give us all a bit of breathing room. Hate that it’s come to this, though.”

  “Sure.” Claude relayed the account information, and they disconnected.

  When Marion returned with a pile of clothes draped over her arm, Charles held a glass of wine out toward her. “To warm you up.”

  She grinned and laid the clothes atop the table. “Thanks. That’ll hit the spot.”

  As she sipped, he set about plating up the side dishes he’d purchased earlier. He knew he’d hardly taste them; he’d be too distracted by the movement of her mouth as she nibbled. The swiping of her tongue across her lips. That’s what she was, really: a petite pixie of a distraction. He’d never been so observant, so tuned in to a woman before. Then again, he hadn’t wanted to spend forever with anyone before now.

  The longer he watched her sip, with her eyes narrowed in a smile, the less control he felt. That enviable cool he usually exhibited—the stoicism—had disappeared the moment he saw her jump down from her rig in Montana.

  He couldn’t help himself. If time was of the essence, and he was dealing in hours and not days, he’d act while he still had a chance.

  Touch, while he still could.

  He reached in and took her wine glass away mid-sip, leaving her sputtering. “Charles! I wasn’t—”

  He pulled her tight against his body and kissed her hard and rough. The kind of kiss women weren’t supposed to like, nonetheless respond to, but she moaned into his mouth and relaxed into his grip. He felt when her legs went limp, and he picked her up and carried her back to his bed.

  Carpe diem. He’d taken enough Latin back in Princeton, too, to appreciate the sentiment.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  He had to be some kind of animal. An insatiable, hungry animal. Every time Marion thought he had to be winding down, he shifted her slightly—moving her leg just where he wanted it or slipping a pillow beneath her hips—and went at it with even more gusto.

  The endearments he whispered against her ear seemed too personal, too familiar, and even though she knew it was insanity, she loved every word of it.

  “Mine,” he whispered, pounding into her harder, so that with each thrust she choked out a small whimper.

  “Yes,” she croaked back. Anytime he wanted it, he could have it. All his.

  “You don’t know … what you’re doing to me …” he said, nipping her earlobe between his teeth and worrying at it.

  Oh, she had some idea. As she was, she worried if she came again, the swimming feeling in her head would drive her to faint. Still, she wanted that O. Craved it like nothing else she’d ever had. He was so good, and so careful. He hit all the right spots, and even the wrong ones felt nice.

  She clamped him inside her harder, forcing a primal-sounding growl from his throat.

  “If
you do that again, I’ll—”

  She did it again.

  He came, but not without sending her over the edge one more time with him.

  He fell into an exhausted heap on the bed beside her, panting and whispering her name. “Fuck, I don’t remember it feeling like that.”

  Her body wracked from her giggles as a tiny aftershock from her last orgasm rolled through her.

  He pushed up onto his elbow and stared down at her with one eyebrow cocked. “You’re tamping down my self-esteem, Marion.”

  She tested her muscles, fearing they’d been ravaged, and the resulting tremor made her eyes roll back in her head. No giggle this time, though. “Oh, sorry. I can’t help it. When you pull out, it feels like a tickle.”

  “So, what was that last thing?”

  “Hell if I know.” She sucked in a deep breath and finally her vision cleared enough for her to see Charles’s smug smirk. Ass. She shrugged against the sheets. “I usually come with a whimper, not a bang, assuming I come at all.”

  “That a damn shame, the thought of you not coming.” His hair teased her shoulder, then her chest, as he hovered over her, working his body down hers until his mouth honed in on one puckered nipple.

  She squeaked and swatted at his head. “Stop it! I don’t think I can take any more.”

  He tipped his head up and wore a pout. Those gorgeous blue eyes of his held a twinkle of mischief.

  “Are you kidding me? You can’t seriously be ready to go again.”

  “Hmm?” His grin widened, and he shifted his hips to show her that, yes, he was indeed ready to go.

  He’d given her just enough space that she crossed her legs at the ankles and slapped her hands over her bits. “Nope. I can’t. I really can’t. I appreciate the, uh …”

  He was easing her hands away and the daring look he cast up the bed at her said he was interested in making her boo-boo all better. He bent lower. Lower. She watched, hypnotized by that blue gaze as his lips dipped closer to her—

  She came to her senses and hurled herself off the bed, wagging a finger at him as she backed away from the stalking sex god. The way he crawled toward her on all fours, slowly, indicated he had absolutely no problem with giving her chase, and maybe, to him, it’d even be a little fun. “No. Dinner is probably ruined.” She eased toward the bathroom, never taking her eyes from his.