Demons Undone: The Sons of Gulielmus Series

by Holley Trent

  “I’m just trying to be helpful,” Gail said.

  Claude growled and pushed his headphones up to his ears. So what if it was childish? It was a wonder he had any home training at all given his upbringing. “You could be helpful by practicing those simple magic acts I gave you.”

  “Maybe you’d like me to practice writing my name in cursive and coloring inside the lines, too.”

  “If you can do them, then show me.” He queued up his music player and sought out the loudest, most nonsensical heavy metal he could find.

  “I don’t need to perform for you.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. I think you’re submissive enough that you may need to. Just not right now. I’m a bit busy.”

  Her jaw dropped.

  He winked and flicked his thumb across the phone screen to start the music.

  She grumbled behind him, and set about clattering utensils and pans loud enough for him to hear over Hinder’s “fuck you” rock.

  Papers scattered and his old, bound manuscripts fluttered open as a gust of wind disturbed the table.

  His careful notes fluttered to the floor, and he pushed back his headphones, stabbed the pause button on his phone, and turned in his seat.

  Gail’s eyes were narrowed into I dare you slits, and he was in just the sort of mood that he just might.

  He stood, gripping the table edge for a few seconds, and searching for that place of inner calm that kept him more man than monster. “Cute trick,” he said through clenched teeth. “Agatha teach you that one?”

  “Yup. Amongst others.”

  “Good for you.” He really meant it. Sort of. “Enjoy it, chéri.”

  “You know what? I don’t like your tone.”

  “And I don’t like being toyed with.” He straightened his spine and stepped away from the table. As he stalked toward her, her haughty expression fell away fractions at a time, until he was right on top of her, in her space.

  He pressed his hands to either side of her at the counter and met her wary gaze.

  She blinked. Swallowed.

  “Afraid?”

  “Of you? No.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “You should be afraid. I very rarely get pushed to my brink and I like keeping it that way. You seem to be intent on witnessing what nuclear meltdown looks like. Trust me when I say you don’t want to.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Being half-demon doesn’t affect my desire to be truthful, even when lying would better suit me. I’m capable of being a monster, and that’s something you’ll have to cope with.”

  Something she might have to cope with. At the moment, he didn’t know where they were headed. Just because it was foretold that this would be their last go at it didn’t mean that they would stay together. They’d reconnected, made love, and it was wonderful, and maybe that was meant to be it.

  He hoped it wasn’t, but he’d spent more than two centuries learning the harsh lesson that hoping for things wasn’t enough to get them.

  Or keep them.

  Closing her eyes, she tipped her chin back and sighed. “You smell like maple syrup,” she whispered.

  He’d spilled a bit on his shirt during breakfast.

  “It’s hard to having a serious conversation with you when my compulsion is to lick you.”

  Now it was his turn to sigh. And she was hard to resist, too. She’d bared her neck to him, so of course he had to sample it. He kissed her chin and down her neck, letting his lips linger at her collarbone.

  Her skin burned hot like a metal door with a raging fire behind it, and he knew just how pliant it would be should she take off all those unnecessary clothes and find her way to his bed. She was soft in all the right places, firm in all the others. Every time he kissed and touched, she responded freely and without filtering. Knowing he could work her into a sensual frenzy with just gentle strokes of his thumb pads over her collarbones made him feel very powerful, and it didn’t have a thing to do with magic.

  She worked her hands into the front of his sweatpants and honed right in on her target. She gave him a possessive tug, and wrapped her fist around his head as she rested her forehead against his chest. She murmured something too soft for him to hear, and he leaned in closer, putting his lips to her ear. “What’d you say?”

  “For fuck’s sake, there are rooms in this house with actual doors and locks. Shit, y’all,” came Sweetie’s chastisement behind them.

  They broke apart, Gail growling as ferociously as Sweetie ever had, and Claude adjusted himself before turning around.

  “What’s with the mess?”

  “Just a little lover’s tiff. Nothing serious.” He bent down and started gathering up his papers. When he had the time, he’d finish scanning it all into his computer because there were far more efficient ways to do research than to carry piles of loose papers around.

  Gail resumed her tending of the stove. He wasn’t sure what was for lunch, but whatever it was smelled amazing and she hadn’t disappointed him yet. The folks in Mortonville appreciated her unique food preparations as well. Clarissa was good at stretching the food budget, even though she didn’t really have to with Charles’s frequent cash infusions, but Gail could squeeze a hundred and five pennies out a dollar. He didn’t want to know what parts of an animal were going into those full-bodied stews, and neither did anyone else.

  “Have you seen Mark around?” Sweetie leaned against the refrigerator and worried at the hem of her tank top. Her lips were pale, and her usually olive skin was flushed.

  “You all right? You’re looking a bit peaked. Do you need a heaping helping of Claude’s demon mojo?” Gail asked in a strained voice.

  What the fuck?

  “Yeah. No. I mean—” She balled the shirt in her fists, and tugged. “I might need to isolate myself for a while so the wolf doesn’t lead me to any bad decisions.”

  Ignoring Gail’s odd distress, Claude turned to Sweetie and studied her. Sweat beaded on her forehead and her attention flitted from one spot to the next, never lingering on a single thing.

  Ah. Calvin had been in that place a couple of years ago, but Calvin also had five or six years over his little sister.

  “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I started snapping at everyone, and everyone’s been so nice to me here.”

  Gail set her long slotted spoon on the holder and stuffed her hands into her pockets. “Where would you possibly go?”

  “Back to the mountains. My momma’s, I guess.” She shuddered as she rolled her eyes.

  Claude wanted to tell her it’d be all right, but he’d met her mother and he’d never been a liar.

  “It would just be a short-term thing, right?”

  “Maybe. I hope so.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. We call it the mania. You fix it by accepting your mate, and I haven’t even picked one. Most wolves settle for whoever’s convenient before they let the mania take hold. If they get it, they don’t let it go long.”

  “I would imagine not,” Agatha said as she stepped into the kitchen, gracefully bypassing all the scattered papers.

  She gave Gail a little peck on the forehead that made Claude’s eyebrows shoot up. The only allusion she’d made to kissing in the three years he’d known her was in once telling Papa to kiss her ass.

  “Your founding goddess was practically a baby when she started having children. It’s no wonder you all go into heat before you’re even able to qualify for mortgages.”

  “Can you zip me to my momma’s?”

  “I can, but do you really want me to?”

  “No. I don’t have a choice. I feel like I’m going to be doing more howling than talking soon, and I need to be somewhere I can run off the wildness.”

  Gail gave her great-great-whatever a tiny nudge to the shoulder. “Isn’t there anything you can do to fix this?”

  Agatha shook her head. “No. Just like your energy is incompatible with what she need
s, so is my power. She’s not my progeny, so I can’t go tinkering with her hormones. I don’t mean that from a political standpoint, which doesn’t matter anyway since I’m no longer neutral. I literally can’t do anything.”

  “But you know who can?”

  “Honey, I do, but she won’t. She likes it this way. It keeps the wolf population up. I sort of envy her for that.”

  Sweetie shuffled her feet to the deck door, her shoulders drawn low and chin to her chest. “Let me go toss a few things into a bag, and I’ll meet you back here in fifteen minutes.” She slid the door closed and stomped down the deck steps.

  Agatha turned to Claude and seemed to notice the mess for the first time. She waved her hand and righted things—not necessarily in the correct order, but at least it was all off the floor.

  “What exactly does neutral mean?” Gail asked. “It doesn’t seem there are that many perks.”

  “You’re right. It’s a club with limited membership advantages, though it hasn’t always been that way. Neutral simply means that you don’t interfere in the disputes of other supernatural beings, even if those disputes affect your family members. It also means you’re denied having any further offspring, should you have any. You’re basically retired and aren’t supposed to use your dominant power.” She rolled her eyes. “But most of us broke that rule.”

  “That sounds positively barbaric,” Gail said.

  “Well, of course it is. What do you expect from petty gods?” She opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of sparkling water from the door. “I suppose the one good thing about being neutral is that people didn’t pick fights with me just for the thrill of it. All sorts of beings are coming out of the woodwork wanting a piece of me. I had a very unpleasant run-in with a demon on the way here.”

  She brushed some imaginary speck off her silk blouse.

  “A demon? Papa?” Claude asked.

  She sputtered her lips. “Bill and I have an agreement. Killing each other would be far too bourgeoisie and predictable, so we wouldn’t bother trying. Wasn’t him. It was definitely a demon of his type, though much weaker.”

  “Weaker as in …”

  “I bound her up in hail and wind, opened a hole to her Hell, and tossed her into it.” She patted down a sliver of hair that must have fallen out of place during her scuffle.

  “Her?” Gail’s voice dripped with incredulity. Who could blame her?

  “Oh, yes. They’re not all pretty boys, sweetheart. Most of the fallen ones came to Earth as males, but there are a few females left. Petty, vicious bitches …” Her gray eyes had taken on a malevolent glint, and Claude wondered what Agatha had endured in her countless millennia before going neutral. He definitely didn’t want to get on her bad side now that her hands were unbound and she could really make him hurt if she felt like it.

  She snapped her fingers. “I got so distracted that I almost forgot why I popped over here. I’ve been doing some investigation of my own about the magic traces left at the warehouse and the residual magic left on your clothes from after the attack, Claude.”

  “Really?” He shuffled his notes atop the table, looking for what had been the topmost page. “I hit a wall, so I’m interested in hearing what you found out.”

  “Well, first and foremost, we can eliminate from the suspect list anyone related to me, which I’ve already established are very few people. It’s just Gail and Ellery, their mother, her brother and nephews, their mother’s father, a childless uncle, and a great-aunt in a nursing home. The great-aunt’s children have no magical inclination. Totally bred out in that line.” She sighed, shook her head, and counted off on her fingers. “Usually, we god-types can taste the flavor of magic and figure out which family tree it shook out of. That’s why I know Claude is descended from Erzulie Yeux Rouge. I knew her briefly.”

  Well, that explained a lot. He couldn’t deny the irony of the fact that that he was descended from a voodoo goddess known for avenging unfaithful lovers. He was a fucking incubus. How many women had he led astray from their committed relationships in the past? Too many to count. No wonder he’d grown tired of the gig.

  “So, whose magic are you tasting?”

  Agatha’s forehead furrowed and lips parted, but no words came out. She closed her mouth, shook her head, and pulled a chair out from the table. Sitting, she laced her fingers together. “I’m ashamed to admit I don’t know something, but it’s for good reason at least. The witch is from the line of some newer god.”

  “Wait.” Gail walked to the back of Claude’s chair and gripped the top. “Gods are still being made?”

  “Sure. Just because we’re old as dirt doesn’t mean we don’t have sex drives.”

  “I don’t want to think about that. That’s like imagining my grandparents getting it on.”

  Agatha lifted her shoulders in an elegant shrug. “Anyhow, the magic definitely bore a taste of witch and not a demigod, which would be how Charles would get classified, in spite of his demon half.” She added that last bit in a mumble. “We’re talking at a least a dozen generations of separation. Maybe twenty. Far less than are between you and me, though, Gail.”

  Gail’s swallow was loud enough for Claude to hear. He reached back and grabbed her left hand.

  “So, that automatically makes whoever it is more powerful than me?”

  Agatha scrunched her face as if she’d been brought a pair of knock-off Louboutins to try on. “I didn’t insinuate that. Stop trying to read between the lines. Whoever it is is dangerous because of the way he or she uses magic, and not because of the amount of magic they possess. This person knows how to borrow.”

  “I figured,” Claude said.

  “You guessed that? How? Walk me through it,” Gail said.

  “I’ll explain it to you later.”

  “No, explain it to me right now.”

  “It’s too complicated.”

  “Too complicated for an idiot, you mean.”

  He ground his fists against his closed eyes and let out a breath. “Stop putting words in my mouth.”

  “I’m obviously behind the curve here, yet when I try to play catch-up, all I get is I’ll tell you later or don’t worry about it. If I wanted to be treated like I was stupid, I would have stayed with my ex-husband. At least he let me know what he thought about me in plain language instead of putting off the insult until later.”

  She tossed her dish towel onto the kitchen table and stormed from the room. She pounded up the stairs, and seconds later, the guest room door slammed.

  “Fuck.” He put his face on the table and banged his forehead against it repeatedly. “This isn’t going to work.”

  “I don’t know if it is or isn’t, but I’m vested in your success for obvious reasons.” Agatha patted his left shoulder reassuringly—sweetly, even—and just when he’d relaxed a notch, her pat turned into a muscle-deflating clench that had him grabbing the table edge. “Don’t mistake me, Claude. I may be too lazy to try to kill your father, but if you hurt Gail, I will personally select a bull to charge you and castrate you on the point of its horns. No, scratch that. I’ll come up with something much, much worse. Fire isn’t one of my toys, but I can learn new tricks.” She patted his head.

  “Where were you when her ex-husband was shredding her self-esteem?”

  “Like I said, my hands were tied.” She cracked her knuckles and eased away from the chair. “They’re not anymore. If I’m going to play the game and pay the consequences for being out and picking sides again, I’m going to give people a reason to hate me. Give me a couple of days. I’ve got something fabulous planned for Mr. Townsend. I’ve been working this one up for two years now, and it’s a doozy.” Her laugh was cold enough to freeze Hell over twice.

  Goddamn.

  “You are absolutely insane,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m not insane. Maybe I have some unresolved issues, but who doesn’t?”

  He couldn’t argue. He sure as shit had his, one of them being upstairs cursing his n
ame loud enough for people down in Myrtle Beach to hear.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Gail’s body shook so violently that in five minutes, she’d become exhausted. Horny and exhausted, a combination that left her feeling intensely dissatisfied and a lot pissed off. She couldn’t do anything for it, though, at least not at the moment. Even standing as far from the gathering of incubi as she could, the cumulative effect of all that energy licked at her all the way from the middle of the barn.

  Clarissa’s house had become too crowded with all the men returning at once—plus Gulielmus and Jason—so when she called a meeting, she directed everyone out to the old barn. As it had been when Gail and Claude had stumbled into it last week, it was empty save for several bags of chicken feed. Those inclined to sit had dragged in lawn chairs.

  The big, beautiful demon Gulielmus chose to stand, grinding his teeth and working his gaze over every inch of the structure as if its mere existence offended his sensibilities.

  Marion sidled up close to Gail, shifted Ruby to her other hip, and whispered, “He hasn’t been on this property since Ariel and John hooked up. The place is warded out the wazoo, so demons like him are generally barred from entering the premises unless they intend the occupants no ill will.”

  “Let me guess. He always intends ill will.”

  Marion chuckled. “He usually does, but we have common enemy for the moment, so I guess this is the closest to a truce as we’re going to get.”

  “It’s happening again—the sexual starvation. Perhaps this sounds borderline hysterical, but right now my body is telling me that I need sex the way a person in the desert needs water.”

  Marion whistled low. “Well, let’s count. We’ve got four male cambions and the mac daddy incubus within a fifteen-foot radius. That’d cause pretty much anyone sexual distress.”

  “Why isn’t it bothering you, then?”

  “Oh, it is, though probably not in the same way since Charles and I are psychically bound. I must say, though, that when he wears his hair loose like that, it makes me want to take him home and tie him to headboard. I bought a satin blindfold last week I could finally take out of the packaging. Yeah, I’d—” She dragged her tongue across her lips and stared lustily at her husband. “Hey, hold Ruby.”