Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series

by Holley Trent

  “Some ally you are,” she muttered.

  John popped the pecans into his mouth and grinned. He really was good-natured, and that made her feel somewhat conflicted. If these people really were what they said they were, shouldn’t they have been bad, or at the very least annoying?

  Well, Charles was annoying, but that was personal. She’d had sex with a demon. What did that even mean? Was she somehow tainted now?

  Feeling somewhat nauseated, she didn’t want to think about it. That was why she’d cracked nuts all night. If she stayed busy cracking nuts, she wouldn’t freak out and puke again.

  “Where did you three go this morning?” She pulled the bowl a little closer, lest they make another grab attempt. “When I woke up, I couldn’t help but notice I had fewer wardens. You left me here with just Ariel and Clarissa. You underestimate my survival instinct.”

  Charles scoffed.

  Marion ignored him. How dare he act like he’d had his feelings hurt? He’d lied to her repeatedly.

  “You have plenty of wardens, even when we’re not here,” Claude said. “You try to leave the property, and someone will let us know. You have to trust us when we say this is a matter of your safety. I thought perhaps it’d make sense if we explain to you all the players.”

  He bent down and pulled a slick silver laptop out of his bag. He lifted the lid and turned the monitor toward Marion.

  There was a picture of a very handsome blond man on the screen, and Marion grunted her appreciation.

  “Pretty,” she said.

  “Most women think so.” Claude went to her side and knelt beside her, adjusting the screen.

  Charles growled at the other end of the table.

  Claude muttered something in what sounded like French, which only provoked Charles to bare his teeth.

  “Cool your jets.”

  “Touch her and I’ll kill you,” Charles said.

  “If he can’t hurt me, why can’t he touch me?” Marion asked, twirling a pecan between her thumb and forefinger.

  “You’ll have to let because I said so suffice as an explanation,” Charles said.

  Claude raised one middle finger at his younger brother, and then raised the other, too. “I know that’s just instinct talking, so I’ll ignore your threat. Don’t forget who I am.”

  “As if I could.” Charles rolled his eyes.

  Claude turned to her. “His aversion to me touching you has more to do with me being attractive than me being an incubus. It’s a human thing you may know already. You know. Jealousy.”

  “Huh.” She nodded. “Got it.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Charles muttered.

  Death threats aside, there seemed to be the typical sort of sibling bickering between these three. She never once felt in any real danger as a result of it, but she didn’t really know what they were truly capable of, either. What did cambions do besides the neat magic tricks John and Claude had already performed? She’d seen John vanish into thin air, just like Mark. She’d seen doors open and close for Claude without him touching them. Ariel and Clarissa didn’t seem fazed by it. Maybe they’d been around it too long and thought it was normal.

  John cleared his throat, and Marion looked at him.

  “I don’t talk in riddles like these two. I haven’t been around long enough. I mean, I’m a fetus compared to them, but Claude has never drained anyone accidentally as far as I know. He’s got to be intentional.”

  “Drain?”

  “Uh …” John twirled his thumbs and furrowed his brow. “Siphon off a little energy. Incubi don’t actually suck souls so much as mark them. The energy draining is just a bonus for the incubus. The same magic that stupefies the women they target can be sort of an anesthetic. They can’t feel a bit of their mojo drying up, and it’s a permanent thing. Not all incubi do it or are even able to. I think all of our father’s children are able to. My mother says it’s the inverse of the gift he had as an angel. He used to be able to revitalize. Now he makes people wither. Anyhow, I had the ability only briefly. Claude has it, but he can control it. Charles can’t control it. It’s always on for him.”

  “So, Ariel is …”

  “Fine. She’s fine.”

  “Good to know.” Marion breathed out a sigh of relief. She hardly knew the woman, and maybe she wasn’t a hundred percent convinced she was her sister, but if she were she certainly didn’t want her immortal soul in peril. Not because she’d fallen for some fucking guy, even if he was a nice one.

  She cut her gaze to Charles, but he didn’t look back. He watched the fingers he drummed on the tabletop, and his forehead was furrowed behind the heavy sheath of hair that had fallen into his face. What must he have been thinking? He’d been moody ever since the day before. She didn’t really understand why, but he had said that being decent was hard for him, so maybe his ill humor was leaching out.

  No, that didn’t seem right. Every time she looked at him when he wasn’t watching, he seemed lost in thought. She’d pay handsomely to know what was cluttering his mind. Did their time together mean anything at all to him, or was she just a job he’d had to do?

  She closed her eyes, and shook the thought free of her head before tracking her gaze back to the screen. “Uh, who is that man?”

  “That’s Papa. Gulielmus.”

  She looked from the handsome beer company CEO to Claude, to John, and finally to Charles, who’d now looked up, but not at her. He stared at the back of Claude’s computer screen.

  She didn’t know why she hadn’t seen the resemblance, because it was scarily obvious, even with Claude who was curly-haired and of darker complexion than his brothers.

  “And he’s a demon, you claim. Like you three.”

  Claude nodded. “A demon in the Christian sense, although there are certainly other kinds. He’s a fallen angel.”

  John scoffed. “He didn’t fall so much as jump.”

  She took deep breath and leaned in close for a better look at the screen. This guy was a powerful supernatural force? Shouldn’t demons look scary? Have fangs or horns or something? Perhaps leathery red skin.

  She swallowed. “This may seem like an incredibly ignorant question, but … do you three look like that all the time?” If that wasn’t Charles’s natural shape, could she add bestiality to her quickly multiplying list of sins?

  “What do you mean?” John asked, wide-eyed.

  Claude put up a hand. “She’s conflating demons with monsters, which in some cases may be true, but there are different types of demons. The ones who are turned angels look like men, because they, like us, were made in God’s image, yes?”

  She nodded. She hadn’t attended church much as a kid, but that seemed to fit what little she knew of the theology.

  He pointed to the screen. “That’s the form he took when he came to Earth,” Claude said. “He has others he sometimes shifts into, but that’s his true shape. Even without his powers, he’d be difficult to get away from. He’s big.”

  She squinted at the screen. He didn’t look particularly bulky.

  “Well, I suppose you’d think he was big,” Claude added. “He’s got almost a foot on me and six inches on those two.” He crooked his thumb in the general direction of his half-brothers.

  Claude was over six feet tall, even if just by a bit, so that would have made Gulielmus—

  Blood drained from her face, rendering her dizzy. Gulielmus could probably crack her like one of the nuts she was holding with his bare hands.

  Claude kept talking, kept scrolling through the photo slideshow on his computer and warning her to stay away from these people, but she could hardly focus.

  Every time she looked up at Charles, she found him staring at her in a way that unsettled her. He barely blinked. There he was, doing it again. What was he thinking?

  Fortunately, Clarissa took that moment to step into the back door with her empty laundry basket in tow. “Y’all have breakfast when you were out?”

  “No. Didn’t have time,” Joh
n responded.

  “Where’d you go?” Marion had asked it on instinct, but she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know the answer.

  Clarissa arrived at the back of Marion’s chair and wrapped her arms around her supposed granddaughter’s shoulders. “Oh, when they’re not here sucking up valuable fresh air, they’re moving other supernatural types around, getting them to safe places. John’s got sisters left at the compound he grew up in he’s trying to sneak out, and then there are other folks—human folks—who did dumb shit by cavorting with demonic types, who are now on the run from them.”

  “Like my parents, supposedly.” Oh, yes. Clarissa’s little house only had two bedrooms. Last night, John had bunked on the sofa and Marion shared her sister’s bed. She suspected the move was more so that Ariel could keep an eye on her, and John to keep an eye on the doors, than concern about her actual comfort. Anyhow, Ariel had told her bedmate Marion that fantastical story, along with the one about why a woman who should have been nearing seventy had the face and body of a thirty-year-old.

  Marion had laughed and laughed, and Ariel hadn’t once cracked a smile. “I’m serious, Marion,” she’d said. “For your own sanity, just go with the flow. Things will get weirder. You’ll see.”

  Clarissa squeezed her shoulders. “Your parents didn’t cavort so much as retaliate. It’s why Ariel has an angel bodyguard, and why you have a shield.”

  Claude groaned. “Had. If I tap into that magic, I can feel it drawing away.”

  This supposed shield kept her off the radar from the entities stalking her fugitive parents, but they’d claimed it was going to pull away on her birthday.

  She looked over Claude’s head at the praying hands wall clock. She’d be twenty-five in twelve hours, and if what these people said were true, she’d have a target on her head. Demons would want to take her, offer her up as a gift for their grand master or something because they wanted to balance the scale for some error her parents had committed.

  Did she believe it? More and more with each passing minute, but maybe that was just her delirium. She’d had a lot of coffee in the last twenty-four hours. She’d probably believe her name was Santa Claus if she had much more.

  Clarissa moved to the stove and hummed as she turned the burner on beneath a cast-iron pan.

  John looked at the clock, said, “Be back in an hour. I’m meeting Ariel for lunch,” and he fucking disappeared.

  Claude squeezed Marion’s right shoulder and tamped the laptop lid closed. “Don’t run, cheri. We’re trying to keep you safe.” He walked into the living room.

  That left Charles, fidgeting a cloth napkin end at his side of the table, now staring at her. Whereas before his gaze had been empty, now he looked like he was really seeing her.

  “What?” she asked somewhat hostilely.

  He shook his head and followed Claude into the living room, and she watched appreciatively as he moved away.

  He may have been a jerk for lying to her the way he had and bringing her into this mess, but she was still attracted to him. She didn’t know whether it was just because he was an incubus, though, or if there was something else in play.

  “Ariel likes my butter bean soup,” Clarissa said, jostling Marion from her thoughts. “You like bean soup?”

  “I’ve never had it.”

  Clarissa put her hand over her heart, aghast, and went to work at the stove.

  No, there was definitely something else in play. These people were serious, so maybe she should start taking them seriously, too.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The first night at the Morton house, Marion had held out hope that this was all just a bad dream—that someone had slipped her a roofie, and she was sleeping off the psychotic effects. But then she’d quickly discovered that both she and Ariel turned sideways in their sleep. They both talked to themselves when they combed their hair. They had the same infinitesimal pinkie toenails.

  They’d both fallen for demon spawn—one who hadn’t even been there for her birthday.

  She’d sat at the kitchen table just before midnight with Ariel at her left side, Clarissa at her right, and John and Claude across from her.

  They waited and watched, and when the clock hand clicked to twelve, nothing happened.

  Marion didn’t feel any differently. There wasn’t a pop or any sudden added physical awareness of the half-demons in the room. The only new sensation was an unsettled feeling in her gut that ebbed when the boys retreated through the kitchen door onto the back deck.

  She hadn’t known what to expect, but shouldn’t there have been something?

  Her official birthday hour of four a.m. came and went, and even then, all she felt was anxious. Perhaps the gravity of her situation was settling in. Before, she’d been a happy idiot, but now she knew too much. And where was Charles?

  Clarissa had done her best to distract Marion by baking her favorite cake—yellow with lemon frosting—for her birthday. How Clarissa had known it was her favorite, Marion didn’t know, but she blew out the candles and ate and laughed all the same.

  When she laughed, Clarissa would smile as if some great feat had been accomplished, and the corners of her eyes would wrinkle the same way Marion’s did. And with every cup of coffee Clarissa poured, and each time she pushed the sugar dish closer, Marion felt that much more regarded. Like someone actually cared for once—that she wasn’t just someone in the way, to be dealt with as quickly and efficiently as possible.

  So it didn’t take long for Marion to fit into the routine of the little house. Didn’t take long at all for her come to terms with the crazy, because even if this was all a sham, belonging to people felt good. Maybe being crazy was worth it because it was better than lonely.

  A week into her little “vacation,” however, loneliness was the furthest thing from her mind. The house was constantly thrumming with voices and bodies, but those people could leave.

  She couldn’t.

  She began to feel a bit stir-crazy. Grabbing Ariel’s arm before she teleported out of the house with Mark, she pleaded, “You’ve got to take me with you. I need to go somewhere.”

  Ariel’s eyes rounded a smidge and before she could finish drawing in the air to refuse her, Marion put her hands up and sighed. “Yeah, yeah. I have no shield. If I leave the property, I trip the demon radar.”

  Not that she understood the seriousness of the situation, but if Mark said it was true, she felt maybe she should at least pretend to make it a consideration.

  “I know you’re bored, Marion. You’re used to being out on the road, but we haven’t yet figured out any way to keep you in stealth mode that comes close to what the angels did before you were born.”

  Marion turned to Mark. “Why can’t they just do that again?”

  “Let’s just say our side overstepped their bounds by doing that in the first place. The two sides are supposed to balance, and we’re only supposed to intercede when the other side steps too far over the battle lines. Things were more or less even when your parents ran, but they were bringing a new party into the equation and we didn’t think that would be fair to you. Ariel had guardians because we knew the demons would hold a grudge. Maybe they wouldn’t bother Clarissa because she’s known to be dangerous, but Ariel was out of the loop … like you were.”

  “But, really, what’s the worst that could happen if I drive into Jacksonville and go people-watching at Wally World? What would they really do to me?”

  John popped in, holding a brown paper grocery sack in his arm. Seeing Ariel there, he walked over and brushed a kiss across her lips. “Figured you’d be gone.”

  “I’m going. Marion’s getting cabin fever, and Mark and I are explaining what the demons would do if they caught her.”

  John’s mouth made an “O” shape.

  “What?” Marion asked, nudging him.

  “Well, that depends on the kind of demon. An incubus like Gulielmus wouldn’t do you any physical harm, but he’d earmark your soul for Hell and possibly m
ake you his eternal sex slave. Assuming they don’t ransom you to the big guy.” He made quote marks with his free hand when speaking those last words. “He’s still pissed about that demon he lost. Now, there’s a variety of other sorts of demons that may want to play with you, and that’s just counting the ones clumped into the Judeo-Christian framework. There’s shit out there you wouldn’t believe.”

  Sure, they kept saying that, but was she supposed to just trust it? “But I can’t just stay here for the rest of my life. I’ve got to go out and live, or what’s the point?”

  “We’ve got a nine o’clock meeting, so let’s hash this out later, okay? I’ll do some thinking during my lunch break,” Ariel said.

  Marion sighed and waved.

  Ariel and Mark vanished, and John wrapped his arm around Marion’s shoulder and guided her toward the kitchen.

  “I know it sucks, Marion. But Claude’s trying to find something. He’s got a pretty extensive library of arcane reference books, and if there’s a solution, he’ll be the one to find it. If not, he has some”—John set down the bag and added in a mumble under his breath—“nontraditional research strategies. And the three of us have a plot in place that may fix some things. Just be patient.”

  “Right. Patient. Where’s—” She was going to say “Charles,” but before she could get the word out, Clarissa stomped up the back deck steps and pulled the door open, bearing a basket of brown eggs from her hens.

  She couldn’t really work a traditional job. To start, she’d been on Social Security before Gulielmus changed her, and she couldn’t very well go back out into the workforce without arousing all sorts of suspicion about her age and appearance. She’d had to give up all of her local haunts—her hairdresser, and even her longtime church—in order to avoid people who would have remembered how she’d looked as a younger woman. So, now she did what she could to supplement her income. Ariel and John more or less took care of her, but there were always extra mouths to feed. Various angels, shapeshifters, and other non-specified supernatural beings popped in and out, using the house as a sort of corporate water cooler.