Devil May Care

by Patricia Eimer

  “So…” He shrugged and plucked at the hem of the sheet.

  “How are you?” I glanced around my bedroom, knowing there was nowhere besides the bed to sit down, but not trusting myself to be so close to Matt. I sank further into my thirteen-year-old girl lameness.

  “Tired.” Matt patted the bed beside him. “Are you going to sit down?”

  “I don’t know if I should,” I said, scooting closer to the wall. “I don’t want to jostle the bed or make you uncomfortable. I…don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I don’t think you can hurt me. Not physically, at least.” He held out his hand for me. His eyes were soft and I could see his vulnerability. “Whatever the Alpha and Jesus did to me it managed to heal everything. Even my tonsils grew back.”

  “Okay, that’s interesting in an odd sort of way. I mean I know Dad always said that Resurrection is like the Celestial version of a system reboot for the body. But growing your tonsils back? That’s just weird.” I tugged at my ponytail.

  “Will you please sit down?” He motioned toward the mattress next to his hip. “All the fidgeting you’re doing is making me nervous.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, moving to perch on the edge of the bed.

  “I said sit,” he said. When I didn’t reply he shifted closer to me and dragged me into the bed beside him, then buried his head in the side of my neck, planting a tender kiss behind my ear. My skin tingled under his lips and little jolts of electricity shot through me. I breathed in with relief at the fact that I could touch him, that he would let me touch him and not shrink away in disgust for what we’d done to him. I breathed deeply against his neck, trying to capture the scent of cookies. But there was nothing. No sunshine smell in his hair. No cookie scent lingering on his skin. No natural, guy scent every man I knew had. Every man I knew except for three. And now Matt was the fourth.

  My stomach sank. All that relief I’d been feeling a moment before fled, and the hole it left filled with dread.

  I pulled away and settled beside him, leaning against the headboard. We sat silently, our fingers interlaced, trying to find the words to make this change between us okay. Trying to find a way to make us okay. What was I supposed to say? Thanks for saving my life? Sorry you died? Good thing we knew a couple of guys who could pull off a resurrection?

  “So, how long are you on bed rest?”

  Stimulating conversationalist I was not.

  He shook his head and smiled. “You’re trying to throw me out already? The Alpha said I should try to stay in bed, supervised, for as long as I could manage. But if having me here and not being able to ravish my broken body is too much for you, I’m sure your mother won’t mind nursing me to health at my place.”

  I rested my head on his shoulder, trying to ignore the flight instinct inside me telling me to run like my tail was on fire, as I not so covertly reveled in the comfort his touch brought. “I’m getting concerned about all the time you’re spending alone with my mother. Does Dad have anything to worry about?”

  “Hardly.” Matt chuckled. “She’s only here because I can’t do anything for myself yet without getting dizzy, and we all knew you were exhausted so I wouldn’t let them wake you.”

  “So you’re on bed rest until you get your strength back?” I ignored his comment about how even in the middle of a resurrection he’d been concerned about my welfare.

  “And until we can get things finalized.”

  “Finalized?” I asked.

  Matt pulled his arm off my shoulders, and hugged his stomach. “Jesus called work for me this morning and claimed to be my doctor. He told them I was in a pretty serious car accident and had fallen into a coma. Now we don’t have to worry about them expecting me back anytime soon.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t even thought about how they were going to explain his absence from work. Hell, I hadn’t even thought about his job this past week. None of us had. We’d just walked all over him while we tried to solve our own problems, not caring about how he was chipping away at his vacation time while we tortured him.

  Matt shrugged and picked at the loose thread on my comforter, not meeting my eyes. “J told them I’d fallen asleep at the wheel coming home from work. He’s going to call back next week and tell them I didn’t survive.”

  “Why?” I took his hand and laced our fingers together. I brought it to my mouth and kissed the back of it, noticing that instead of being rough it had become smooth and unblemished.

  “Look at me,” he said, sighing. “I can’t go back there like this. Not with what I am.”

  “The changes you’ve gone through are all so subtle that the human eye won’t register them. Or if they do they’ll see that something is different but they won’t be able to figure out what.”

  “I’ll register them,” he said. “I’ll know that I’m different and I can’t explain why, but that matters to me. Besides, I think everyone knows that I’ve got bigger things to deal with than my law career. Your uncle didn’t just bring me back because he’s nice. He doesn’t do that. Remember?”

  I stilled and considered his words, the tension in my gut shifting instantly into a giant knot of dread. He was right. My uncle didn’t do things to be a nice guy. “Then why did he do it?”

  “The Angale can’t live on their own,” he said. He moved so that our foreheads were pressed together and our lips were only centimeters apart. “They can’t be out in the normal world and interact with people. I’d love to tell you that they can, and that it would just take a little work on their part and they’d acclimate. But we all know they won’t. They can’t.”

  I froze, and the entire world turned to ice around me. The ball of dread in my stomach careened upward like a cannonball, smacking into my heart broadside and shattering it into a million tiny pieces. How could they decide such a thing? How could he agree to it?

  “My uncle wants you to lead the Angale? He wants you to be the leader of a cult full of bloodthirsty nephilim? Or you want this?”

  “They can change,” he said. “They will change. I won’t lead people like my mother did. But the most important part is if I’m in charge I can keep you safe.”

  “So you’re going to lead an army of Celestial beings that want to kill me and it’s for my own good?”

  “Biloxi has been compromised. We’ve found a place near Greensburg where I can create another home for them. That way I can stay right here with you. Plus, your father and uncle will be able to help me manage them, and they’ll help me try to integrate those who want to live out in the world.”

  “It won’t work.”

  He held the sides of my face, forcing me to look up at him. His eyes swirled with passion and a type of haunting intensity I’d never seen before. “It has to. I refuse to let it not work. You could have died and I wasn’t able to protect you. I won’t let that happen again.”

  “No.” My knees were trembling, and I had to fight the urge to run out of the room crying. He wasn’t supposed to be so supportive. So caring. He was supposed to be angry and resentful. Instead, here he was acting like he needed to protect me. Why couldn’t he be decent and act like an asshole? Just this once?

  “Let me protect you. Let me keep you safe. I love you, Faith. Let me show you that by trusting me to take care of you.”

  “I can’t.” I looked down at the comforter, refusing to meet his eyes. “You died and then they wouldn’t let me help save you. They made me go outside and you were here and I was so…so…”

  “Scared?” he asked. I nodded, and he squeezed my hand. “I was scared, too. I have been so scared because there were times I thought everything I knew had never taken place. That you weren’t real. But then, there would be these moments where my mind would clear, and it would all make sense again. I would make sense again. We would make sense again and I wasn’t scared anymore.”

  I tried to think of something to say that would make this better. Some way to save what we had. For both of our sakes. The problem was, I loved Matt. I adored him. He
was the key that made everything else in my life make sense. But he had died trying to save me. And now he was going to give up everything he’d fought for in some desperate attempt to keep me safe. How could I love him and let him do that?

  “About your mom.” I started in my usual, utterly tactless manner. I didn’t want to bring it up, but at the same time I couldn’t let Valerie’s elephant-sized absence stifle us, either. Not with everything else we had to face.

  “She tried to kill you. She kidnapped a demon. All of it was part of some grand plan on her part to set up my father as a false God with herself as his prophet. The Alpha said my father is claiming he had no idea what she was doing, but there’s a pretty heavy cloud of suspicion hanging over him. Two attempts by his followers at a Celestial power grab in less than two months makes him look incompetent.”

  “Well…” I bit my lower lip. He wasn’t acknowledging she was dead. Okay, so he knew she was guilty of what could have become some pretty terrible things, but did he realize Lilith vaporized her on his couch? “I just wanted to say I was sorry about what happened to her.”

  “Why are you sorry?” he asked. “Lisa told me what happened. Mom managed to slip free of her bindings because of all the weird energy flowing through the building during the whole Bringing Me Back to Life thing, and she attacked you. If it would have been me there instead of Lilith, I would have killed her, too.”

  “What Lilith did wasn’t a heat of the moment, kill or be—”

  “Lilith killed her to protect you. My mother was determined to keep after you until one of you was dead. She got what she wanted, just not the way she wanted it. She’s not the first person to have that particular outcome happen when they messed with your family.”

  Right, Levi. When the Alpha caught him trying to steal power from other immortals, starting with me, He’d put him in a pocket of Purgatory and granted him the powers of a pure Celestial Being. He was a god among men. Then, before Levi even got the chance to enjoy his new powers, the Alpha pushed them just beyond his reach and cut off his access to them for all time.

  Now we had been forced to deal with a potential uprising by a group of psycho nephilim and Matt had almost died. No, scratch that—he had died.

  “We can’t see each other anymore.” I blurted out.

  “Excuse me?” Matt looked at me, his face stunned and his mouth hanging slightly open.

  “You keep getting hurt because of me. I’m like a Celestial danger magnet for you. Your brother blew up your car. Your mom almost had you killed by garden sprites. The risk is just too high.”

  “My half-brother blew up my car,” he said, pointing at his chest. “My mother sent me to die by garden sprites. My family members are the ones who keep trying to kill me.”

  I turned away from him and shoved my hands under my armpits so that I wouldn’t lose my nerve and fall into his arms like some weak-willed girl having her first lover’s tiff. “You’re only in their sights because of me. If you lived anywhere else but next door to the Devil’s youngest daughter, they wouldn’t have had any idea where to find you. You’d be safe right now.”

  “I am safe right now,” he said. “I’m here, you’re here, your father has an entire legion of demons on call and waiting for the moment I’m not safe. Besides, all things considered, your uncle’s little parlor trick has made sure that I’m invincible. So I can’t imagine a world in which I’ll ever not be safe again. I promise you Faith, I’m fine. We’re fine. You just need to trust me.”

  “He’s sending you to lead a group of crazy nephilim into a new life. Just because they can’t kill you doesn’t mean they can’t find a way to hurt you.”

  “So what? We’re through? Is that what you’re telling me?” Matt threw back the sheets and stood. I tried to keep my eyes focused forward and not stare at his naked butt. They’d even managed to cure the scar on his back from the bike accident he’d had in college. The Alpha was thorough. “Right now, what you’re doing to us is hurting me more than anything that I’ve been through in the past three days.”

  I squeezed my eyelids shut, trying to keep from getting distracted. “I think it would be safer for you.”

  “This isn’t about me being safe,” Matt said. I peeked at him through slitted eyelids. He was pacing at the foot of my bed, his wings extended and his hands tugging at his hair. “This is about you being scared.”

  “You’re right. I’m terrified. What if something happens to you because of me?”

  “I know,” Matt grabbed my arms and hoisted me off the bed, “that nothing I’ve ever felt in my life compares to what it feels like when I’m with you. Nothing.”

  He laced his fingers through my hair and pressed his lips against mine. An electric spark shot between us and my knees went weak while the world spun around us. I grabbed at his shoulders, melting into his kiss, my knees wobbly. If I had to give him up, at least I’d have this last moment to cherish.

  He pulled away from me and paced over to the window, resting his hands on the windowsill while I stood there stunned, my fingers over my mouth and tears welling up in my eyes.

  “I love you,” he said. “Can you even comprehend that? Or is that beyond you as a demon? I love you, Faith.”

  “It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s—”

  “Don’t,” he turned to stare at me, his eyes filled with anger and hurt. “Don’t give me some tired old ‘it’s not you it’s me’ bit. I love you. And I’m going to go on loving you for the rest of eternity. I don’t want anyone, or anything else in my life besides you. I don’t need anything besides you.”

  “Matt.” I pulled my hands free and turned away from him. “Please respect my decision and go.”

  “You want me to leave?” I could hear him rustling around behind me, pulling on his clothes. “Fine. I’ll leave.”

  I kept my head down and tried to hold back my emotions.

  He stood before me, and tilted my chin up so I could look him in the eyes. “You can declare that we’re over, Faith Anne Bettincourt, but you can’t keep me from loving you anyway.

  “Because there’s still an ‘us.’ Even if you won’t accept it. No matter what, I’m still going to be right here and I’m going to keep standing here until you realize that we’re meant to be together.”

  I didn’t bother to answer, just jerked my chin from his grasp and looked at the floor. He let out a huff and stalked away, slamming the door to my bedroom loudly behind him.

  I sat at the edge of the bed and clasped my shaking fingers together. Sure he was angry now, but soon he’d realize that he was wrong and that we most definitely didn’t belong together. Then he could find a nice girl and settle down. A girl who wouldn’t cause him pain. Someone who deserved a guy like Matt in their life.

  “I’d go torture him for making you this miserable,” Malachi said. I glanced up to see the dread demon hovering in the doorway. “But you’ve done this to yourself and managed to destroy him in the process. So, there’s nothing left for me to do, but stand here and wonder exactly what those sprites knocked loose in your noggin.”

  “Shut up.” I stomped into my bathroom and turned on the sink so I could splash some cold water on my face.

  “You’re making a mistake,” he said. “I’ve never been a fan of the white light brigade but—”

  “Don’t.” I held my hand up.

  “But—”

  “I said don’t.” I walked to my bed, curled up where Matt had been a moment earlier, and ignored him.

  “Fine, lay there and sulk. Pretend to sleep if it helps. But when you wake up, nothing’s going to have changed. You’ll still be an idiot who made the biggest mistake of her life. Plus you forced me to agree with a member of the other team. Something I’ll never forgive you for, by the way.”

  “Shut up.”

  “He’s right. You are run—”

  “Shut. Up.” I flopped onto my side, pulling the blankets over my head, ignoring the angrily twitching dread demon, so I could wallow in my o
wn misery instead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Faith,” my mother said through my closed door. She pounded on my door and I didn’t bother answering. After four hours of me not answering I hoped she’d give up and go away for good. No, instead, she was coming back to knock every five minutes now. “Open this door or I will break it down. I’m not kidding this time. I will do it.”

  “Fine. It wasn’t locked anyway.” I stalked over to the door and pulled it open. Mom wore a pink bathrobe and her hair was rolled into bright purple foam rollers. The green mud mask on her face was starting to crack and I could see that she’d gotten some of it matted in her eyebrows. What in the name of the Alpha and the Omega was she doing dressed like that?

  “You mean I’ve been standing here beating on your door all this time and it’s been open?” She gaped at me, her mouth hanging open and her eyes wide.

  “Yeah.” I turned to go back to bed. What was these people’s problem with letting a demoness be miserable? You’d think they could get the obvious signs that I wanted to wallow in self-pity alone.

  “So why didn’t you open the door four hours ago?”

  “I didn’t want to talk to you, obviously. If you didn’t hear the latest news, Matt and I broke up.”

  “We all heard.” Mom followed me over to the bed and started to rub my back. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m sure you can find another nice boy. Maybe one of your father’s legions?”

  “Because that worked so well for Hope?”

  “You could always get together with Malachi,” she suggested.

  What was she playing at? “Mom, Mal has been my bodyguard since the day I was born. Besides, he’s three feet tall and wears a cloak.”

  “Only because it made you laugh the first time he showed up that way,” she said.

  What? Malachi was, well Malachi. A whole legion full of bad in one tiny, travel-sized package. Wasn’t he?

  “Mom, Malachi has always appeared that way in the mortal realm unless he chose to shapeshift into another body. Normally a female body.”