Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series

by Holley Trent

  “That dopey werewolf of mine is like that.” Julia looked off toward the breaking waves and spun her wedding ring round and round. Her voice was tender, and she wore a little smile. “He’d prefer it if I just stayed home, but when he’s on the road with the team, I get lonely in the house by myself. Some of the members of the wolf pack come by and try to entertain me, but it’s not the same as going out somewhere and letting my hair down. I’ve been lucky so far. Gulielmus hasn’t caught up to me yet, but a few weeks ago a demon scout got really close.”

  “A what?” Marion asked. She’d heard the boys mention them in passing, but she had no idea what they were.

  “A scout. They’re like the hunting dogs of the demon world. My father directs them to find us when we don’t respond to telepathic summonses or when he can’t hone in on us to teleport to where we are. They run in grids and pass off information to each other. Sometimes you don’t know they’re nearby until they get up close. Anyhow, I’d taken off the protective charms Claude gave me last year. They help to keep me shielded above and beyond my own power. They magnify it. I’d rubbed against a patch of poison ivy near the cabin, and hated having the necklace on while the rash healed. Like a dummy, I went to the store without bothering to put my usual mental shields up. I’d gotten so used to wearing the charms, you know? Careless. I saw that thing sniffing around by my truck. I had to take the groceries to the customer service counter and tell them to hold them until I got back. And then I had to—”

  She swallowed and fiddled the end of her long blond braid.

  “What, Julia?”

  Ariel cleared her throat. “Julia’s the kind of person who’d cry if she saw a mouse in a trap. The boys taught her how to deal with the scouts, but it’s not exactly the same thing as killing a chicken to eat.”

  “But you’re here—out with us. You talked Ariel into it,” Marion said softly.

  “I’m like you, Marion. I spent most of my life on a short tether, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my years hiding. I take calculated risks sometimes. Most of the time, I don’t regret them. But … I don’t know. Maybe I was wrong this time.”

  “I wish you had let me bring Mark,” Ariel said. She dumped the remnants of her meal into a takeaway box and fastened the flaps. “He wouldn’t have snitched, and I always feel safer when he’s around.”

  Julia sniffed. “Thanks, sissy.”

  Ariel reached over and squeezed her hands. “You know what I mean. You’re still a novice in the scheme of things, and taking care of us is a lot of responsibility to put on one person. Mark and Big Daddy G are pretty evenly matched, given they’re the same age and equally equipped.”

  The waitress came by with the bill, and Ariel tucked her debit card into the leather portfolio.

  Marion pushed her bare feet back into her sandals. “I do appreciate you breaking me out, though,” she said to Julia. “I’m used to taking care of myself, and I don’t like feeling like I’m a burden to everyone.”

  “I felt that guilt too, for a while,” Ariel said, “but Momma told me that I should never be remorseful about loving someone, especially when he loves you back.”

  “Who said anything about love?” Marion let her gaze fall to her belly and pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. Guilt, she had plenty of. Being confined to her grandmother’s property, she’d had too much time on her hands to think and fret. Maybe they were in this situation because she couldn’t say no—couldn’t resist a man. She’d always been proud of the fact that she didn’t need a man to complete her and she could do things on her own. She still didn’t need a man to complete her, but being claimed so ardently by someone had felt nice. Charles had made her feel like the only woman in the world worth consorting with. He’d made her feel beautiful when she’d tried so hard to hide that part of herself away.

  He was an incubus. This is what they did—they wrapped women up in their charms and made them forget about their own strength and agencies. They stripped women of their wills and replaced their abilities to reason with lust.

  “Fair enough.” Julia pushed back from the table and stood. She pushed her cute orange-rimmed sunglasses up her nose and stretched her arms over her head. “I wish love for all of my brothers. You may not believe it, but I know Charles almost as well as I know John. He says you’re his, and I believe him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was right about Calvin. That’s why we call Charles Cupid. I don’t know how it works.” Her voice took on a dreamy quality and she smiled. “It’s a trait he inherited from his mother. I guess he can pick couples the way some people sense a change in the weather in their bones. I thought he was insane, especially after I met that doofus husband of mine, but … he was right. We both had something the other needed.”

  “That sounds crazy,” Marion said, but she wanted to believe it. She was so hung up on him being an incubus and everything that meant, but he did try to be good, didn’t he? Just like Julia was good. Julia was a woman so full of love, that she seemed to have tamped down that demon part of her—snuffed it out so it didn’t exist.

  Maybe Charles was capable of love, too. She could love him. Maybe she already did a little, but she couldn’t be sure if it was real or some spillover from all that lust.

  “I hope the ocean’s warm,” Ariel said. She pulled the straps of her hemp tote up to her shoulder and stood.

  Marion shoved back from the table and grabbed the chair arms to stand, when a strong arm pressed at her back, aiding her up.

  Without thought, she grabbed a butter knife from her place setting, and spun, pressing the dull tip against the handsome young man’s sternum. “Back up.”

  He put up his hands, backed up a pace, and grinned so his smile reached his eyes. “I’m so sorry. You looked like you could use a bit of help, and I acted without remembering some ladies don’t like having their personal space broached.”

  Pressing her shaking left hand over her racing heart, she blew out a breath and relaxed her grip on the utensil. She let it fall to her plate and swallowed down her nerves.

  Relax.

  What was wrong with her? She’d never done that before, not even during all those years on the road. Maybe it was the baby and all those extra hormones making her jumpy.

  “It’s all right,” she said, and looked to Ariel and Julia for reassurance. If they were calm, she could be, too. She couldn’t trust her gut lately.

  “Do I know you from somewhere?” Julia asked. She narrowed her eyes and laid her head to the side.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, never losing that easy grin. He was cute in a preppy college boy kind of way. He had close-cropped reddish-brown hair, storm cloud gray eyes, and high coloring as if he’d just finished a swim or a run. He was certainly dressed for it in his Hilfiger shorts and loose tank. “I’d remember a face like yours.”

  She giggled, obviously flattered, but eased away from the table. “Come on, Marion. I see a clear spot up the beach.”

  Ariel stepped off the restaurant deck after her, casting one last look over her shoulder at Marion to mouth, Come on.

  Marion turned back the stranger and gave him a little finger wave. “Uh, thanks for the help. Or rather, the attempt to help.”

  He performed a gallant bow. “Of course. So, your name is Marion, is it?”

  Groaning, she pressed the heels of her palms against her spine’s base and tried to quiet her back’s roar of pain. “God, are you going to tell me you had a grandmother named that or something? I get that all the time. I may start going by my middle name. Nah. Middle name’s not much better. What were my parents thinking? Marion Aoife.” She scoffed. “Why not just spell it E-v-a? I’ll have to ask them what they were smoking.”

  Why was her gut still knotted up? She hadn’t felt this out of sorts since that time she’d had to carry a double-sized load across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge during a blinding hailstorm.

  Maybe it was the way he rarely blinked.

  Or maybe she’d just
eaten too many clams.

  Julia hadn’t noticed anything amiss about him, and of all people, she should have.

  Pull it together, girl.

  He shook his head, and pursed his lips. He rocked on his heels a few beats, and then said, “A grandmother? No. Stepmother, though.”

  “Well, I’m sure she’s a wonderful person.”

  He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. My father has always had questionable taste.”

  “All righty, then. Nice talking to you.” Weirdo. She hopped down to the sand and started picking across the beach toward Ariel and Julia, glad to put the conversation behind her.

  When she looked back, the man was still smiling, but now he stood with one hand wedged in his shorts pocket while the other fiddled with a cell phone.

  Why worry about demons when plain ol’ humans were nutty enough?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Charles and Claude waited until the ladies had disappeared up the beach, and when Ross put his phone to his ear, they made their move.

  Charles reached in and deftly plucked the phone from his hand, disconnecting the call before the person on the other end answered.

  Claude wrapped his arm around his nephew as if to hug him, and jabbed a syringe into his side.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Ross asked as he tried to squirm away. Claude patted his shoulder, and murmured a few words that had Ross breathing through his mouth and swooning on his feet.

  “Fa-fa-fa-fa …”

  “That’s right, little boy. You’re just tired. Had too much sun. Uncle Claude’s going to see you up to your room.”

  He helped the smaller down off the deck and cast a look back at Charles. “Go deal with your woman. I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

  “Yeah.”

  Damn that woman. What the hell was she thinking? And Ariel and Julia, too? Well, John and Calvin would have to straighten them out later. He’d told her she was always being watched—that she couldn’t go far without someone alerting him she’d left, and good thing, too. They may have sneaked out from under Clarissa’s nose, but a certain wind deity who technically wasn’t allowed to pick sides had no qualms about tailing Marion on occasion. Agatha apparently got bored and needed stuff to do, and she found the Morton women more entertaining than anything on television.

  He heeled off his shoes and carried them as made his way across the beach. He was surprised it had taken Ross so long to show up. He’d been anxious for months, worrying Ross would hone in on Marion while she took her daring little walks down the country road Clarissa’s property sat on. She never got far, but far enough away from the protective barriers that she could have been a sitting duck.

  He’d balked at Clarissa about it, and she’d said, “Let the girl have some freedom. At least the illusion of it,” but he hadn’t been happy about it. He couldn’t be with her all the time, not while he and his brothers were doing the supernatural security guard thing. They were doing the equivalent of moving chess pieces across the board while their opponent had his back turned. All those grown children Pop had waiting in the wings to herd into the sex demon ranks were currently inaccessible. If he had known that using his Cupid-esque gifts would make people do favors for him they normally wouldn’t, he would have switched teams long ago.

  He, Claude, and John had relocated thirteen of Pop’s kids in three months, and they’d all had to kiss a lot of ass to make it happen. Pop had a reputation, even amongst non-demon supernaturals, and people generally didn’t want to consort with his children. Charles had tried offering them money, but once they learned who his mother had been, they became quite compliant. Funny that people didn’t fear him when he was the bearer of love. Lust, you could stumble onto anywhere. Love, well, that was a rare element.

  Claude, who’d encountered Ross on a few occasions in the past, shook some information out of his witchy grapevine. Apparently, the quarter-demon liked to run his mouth, and that was why they knew he planned to stalk Ariel and Clarissa, thinking Charles would eventually come around.

  Now that Ross not only had proof of Marion’s existence, but also that Julia frequented Clarissa’s place, there was no way Charles could let the little brat loose. He was willing, up to a certain point, to let bygones be bygones, but apparently Ross was a sniveling little snitch. The number he’d punched into his phone was Pop’s.

  The fact he had to use a phone was a good thing, though. That meant he didn’t have a psychic link with the big guy. Pop couldn’t locate him or transmit information instantly.

  Good.

  Charles sneaked up behind the ladies with as much stealth as a man of six-and-a-half feet was capable of and laid a hand on Julia’s back.

  She jumped and clutched her chest. “Crap! Don’t kill me.”

  No wonder Calvin was so protective of her. She had no danger instincts whatsoever.

  Marion, however, he wasn’t so sure of. She’d surprised him. He’d seen her grab that useless butter knife, yet Julia hadn’t even batted an eye about Ross entering their proximity.

  Marion groaned. “Damn.”

  “You gonna tell on us?” Ariel asked, and she kept rubbing sunscreen onto her arm.

  “Yes,” he said. “You shouldn’t even have to ask.”

  “Can we at least get some sun before you shoo us on home? We’ve come this far.”

  He sighed and dropped his shoes onto the corner of their large blanket. “An hour.”

  “Yay!” Julia exclaimed, clapping her hands.

  “Turn up that shield of yours, Julia. Let’s not broadcast to every supernatural being on the beach that we’re here.”

  “You got it, bro.” She scooted over and made Charles a bit of room on the blanket.

  He would have rather sat next to Marion, but as far as she knew, they couldn’t touch. Given the argument he figured they had coming up, he didn’t want to push it, anyway. At this point, everyone knew the moratorium was off except Marion. It seemed everyone was holding their breath, waiting for them to finally embrace and get the awkwardness out of the way, but for the moment it was easier to maintain the status quo. Seeing as how she kept icing him out of even simple conversations, he didn’t think she’d believe him if he told her. After all, she didn’t believe the fated mate thing, either. It was sort of a big deal, and he wouldn’t blame her for being extra cautious. It was her soul at stake.

  They sat in silence for a while, avoiding each other’s gazes. Ariel plugged her ear buds in and queued up something in her MP3 player before lying back. Julia rolled over, splayed a much-abused paperback atop the blanket, and furrowed her forehead as she began to silently read.

  Marion drummed her fingers atop her thighs and chewed the inside of her mouth.

  “Whose idea was it?” he asked when she didn’t appear to be forthcoming with conversation.

  She shrugged and pulled her wide-brimmed straw hat a bit lower so he couldn’t see her eyes. “Can’t remember. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “I see. And are a couple of hours on the beach worth your life?”

  “Come on, don’t add to my guilt. Nothing happened besides some weirdo getting too friendly at the restaurant. He gave me the heebie-jeebies.”

  The hair on the back of Charles’s neck prickled. The fact she could sense something was amiss might cause problems down the line. He’d have to have a little talk again with oh-so-coy Clarissa about just what she was. He wasn’t buying the little bit psychic bullshit, and Claude had confirmed in no uncertain terms they weren’t witches.

  Julia looked up. “What’d he say to you?”

  “It was just general oversharing. I think he needs a few hours on a shrink’s couch or a long phone call to his mommy.”

  Charles ran a hand through his loose hair and blew out a breath. He had no idea who Ross’s mommy was. Even knowing his approximate age didn’t help. Charles had been a fairly young incubus at that point, and everything from back then was one testosterone- and magic-laden blur. He had to have been conceiv
ed around the time his mother was killed, and that had been one of his blackest periods.

  “You said heebie-jeebies,” he said. “In what way?”

  “I don’t know,” Marion said. “I can’t explain it. When he got within a couple of feet of me, all of a sudden my stomach knotted up. A little voice in my head said there was something wrong with him.”

  Julia closed her book and looked up at Charles.

  He gave his head a small shake.

  What are you hiding?

  He squinted at her. Since when can you communicate this way?

  I guess I could all along. John taught me how. She cut her gaze over to Marion beside her, who was now peeling her clingy white T-shirt off to expose an overstretched tank top. Of course she didn’t have a bathing suit. When would she have had a chance to get one? He hated that she couldn’t be out and about when she was such an extrovert. The supernatural types cycling in and out of Clarissa’s house kept her entertained to some degree, but there was nothing like going out to seek your own fun.

  He had to fix this for her—was trying to.

  Julia gave his arm a nudge. Tell me.

  He leaned back, put his palms in the sand, and fixed his gaze on the water ahead again. If you tell her this, I’ll see to it that Calvin never lets you out of his sight. You’ll have so many werewolves circling you, you’ll think you’ve died and reincarnated as the goddess Lupa. You’ll never stop finding bits of fur floating in your coffee. You want that?

  Don’t be a douche. Tell me.

  In his periphery, he saw her pick up her book and hold it in front of her face. That man back at the restaurant is one-quarter demon, and he seemed to hit Marion’s radar stronger than he hit yours.