by Amy Lane
Harry shot her a wary look. “You’ve been good to us,” he said, his voice sounding rusty, like he didn’t use it enough. “Better than anyone. We thank you.”
She smiled gently at him, her eyes troubled. “It’s been our pleasure, young Harry. Now please make yourselves comfortable, and by all means get poor Mullins a cushion.”
Harry took one from the sofa against the wall, and Edward brought over a chest for him to lean against. Both of them had obviously been schooled in how to handle a demon summoning, because they began mumbling the spell of protection three steps from the pentagram on the floor, and they continued mumbling it as they set Mullins up to sit cross-legged, as was most comfortable for him, on the floor.
They continued the recitation until they were safe on the other side of the chalked outline, and Mullins nodded approvingly.
“Very good,” he said. “And your Latin is flawless.” He winked at Leonard. “Did you teach them that?”
Leonard inclined his head. “I did. But they’ve been good students—in all matters.”
“Emma taught us to mend our own clothes,” Edward said shortly, as though affronted. “And how to cook.”
Mullins was delighted. “Well, everybody should know how to care for themselves. Emma does take good care of you, I’m sure, but someday you must care for yourselves, yes?”
Harry and Edward exchanged the glances of puzzled conspirators. “Someday, yes,” Harry said carefully, and for a moment, Mullins doubted. The boys were planning to run away already, weren’t they?
“Emma said we could stay as long as it suited us,” Edward said diplomatically. “We were surprised, you see, to suddenly be cats.”
Mullins looked at Emma with some speculation, and she herself gave back a very catlike smile.
“I see,” he said politely. Inside, he was thinking that Emma had perhaps done the wisest thing of any human he’d ever known. She’d given the boys their freedom—but had also given them an incentive to stay. Clever, clever Emma.
Wistfully, Mullins thought that if he had been born to parents as wise as Emma and Leonard, he might not be sitting here, a twisted beast, pathetically grateful that Emma and Leonard’s careful schooling had never put Mullins in the position of having to choose between his own well-being and tearing the boys apart, as protocol would have dictated had they forgotten their protection incantation while getting him a place to sit.
He hoped with the tattered remnants of his soul that he never had to choose between what protocol dictated and harming Leonard and Emma’s children.
He had a sinking feeling he might rather be torn apart himself than participate in harming these boys that the two of them so obviously cherished.
It turned out that the boys were the reason he was there.
Leonard sat down in a hand-carved rocking chair that Mullins gathered he had made himself, and Emma made herself comfortable on the couch. Together they gently urged Mullins to help the boys learn Latin, to build upon the very solid knowledge they had already imparted and to explain nuances that would hinder spellwork and get in the way of their more arcane studies.
“I don’t get it,” Harry said grumpily, writing with awkward precision on his small chalkboard. “Everybody keeps telling me that it’s the intention that counts. If it’s the intention that counts, why can’t we just think ‘Turn into a toad’ and have that happen?”
“Language makes your thoughts clearer, Harry,” Edward said, concentrating on his own tablet. Francis sat next to him, still in cat form, and moved his paw purposefully on a scattering of dust Emma had brought in when she couldn’t coax him to change. “If you just think ‘Turn into a toad’ at someone, the thought’s gonna go wide. You might look at their hat and turn it into a toad; you might turn their boots into a toad. But if you say very specifically ‘Save the sheep in the wold but turn their owner into a toad,’ and you use a different language to focus it, to make it special, the spell is more likely to take effect.”
“Exactly,” Mullins said, surprised and pleased. Harry was smart and aggressive—but he was also passionate and emotional. Edward was the more logical of the two of them, the calmer one, the thinker.
Mullins was enjoying all the boys’ company, but something about Edward soothed Mullins, gave him feelings of peace in the universe. For a demon living in constant fear of Menoch’s lash, it was an amazing luxury, this feeling of peace.
Suddenly Francis let out a distracted meow, and all eyes turned toward the little cat who was licking the dust off his paw. In front of him was a slightly hard to read but perfect conjugation of the Latin verb “to eat.”
Emma raised her eyebrows. “Feeling a bit peckish, are we, my sweet?”
Francis twitched a tail and yawned, showing teeth.
Edward reached out and smoothed his brother’s fur. “Fine,” he said shortly. “Let me finish my own work and Harry and I will fetch the cake from the cold box. Is that what you wanted?”
Francis cleaned his paw again, feigning indifference.
“There is also,” Harry said mildly, “some fish left over from dinner.”
Francis sat back on his haunches and blinked expectantly. Harry held out his tablet for Mullins’s inspection. “I botched the last one,” he said apologetically. “I’ll fix it when I’m back if that’s all right with you?”
“It is indeed,” Mullins said, nodding. Edward kept working assiduously as Harry moved to the small kitchen area and began pulling out the cake and the dishes, Francis at his heels. Mullins risked a glance behind him and saw Harry feeding Francis small pieces of grilled trout as he worked, and Francis taking them with delicate nibbles.
He’d seen brothers in blood who weren’t as kind.
“I didn’t botch the last one,” Edward said with satisfaction. “That should be acceptable.”
Mullins forgot the grotesquerie of his expression and smiled.
To his eternal surprise, Edward smiled back. “It’s okay?” Edward asked, always seeking perfection.
“Indeed,” Mullins told him. “It’s very well done.”
“Excellent! Time for cake. Would you like some, Mullins?”
Abruptly Mullins became the outsider again, an agent of hell, a creature who depended on tricks and subterfuge and entrapment. “I’m sorry, Master Edward, no. And Emma and Leonard should have taken care to make sure you never offer a demon food in your home, ever.”
Edward bit his lip. “They said that,” he mumbled, clearly discomfited. “It’s not their fault—”
“You were being polite, Edward,” Emma said softly. “Just remember you are lucky this is Mullins. Any other demon would have taken you up on it and we would have all been ripped apart in our beds.”
If a demon ever ate the food offered to him in free will, he was bound to the offerer. Another demon could have used that bond to return to the home unbidden and do… well, whatever the family was in a state to let him do.
Edward nodded, looking shamed in a way that was far beyond what reprimand Emma had offered, and Mullins watched him go, troubled.
“They’re very young,” he said to Leonard, and Leonard gave him a bleak look.
“They are—far too young to have gone through what they have.” Leonard made a little sign then, with his forefinger and thumb, and looked up and around. Mullins didn’t have to look around—his old mentor hadn’t lost his touch, and the secrecy spell was very firm indeed.
Mullins cocked his head, wondering why Leonard would block his next words from the family.
“What?”
“They were escaping from a brothel—all three of the boys had been abused or traded. Edward and Harry were running to try to save Francis from the worst of it.”
Mullins felt a vague red haze fill his brain. Anger, the devil’s favorite sin.
“Which brothel?” he asked, his voice as measured as it had always been.
“The Golden Child,” Leonard told him, eyes level. “Their worst abuser, Big Cass, was killed the night we
were there—”
“By whom?” Mullins needed to make sure the job had been done right.
“Suriel,” Leonard said, not trying to sugarcoat it.
“How long….” Time stretched so oddly in hell. It had felt like a year, maybe two down there, but Mullins had assumed it had been but a day. But this place—this was a well-established home. There were gas lights in sconces on the walls, and the boys had an established routine. Somebody had already taught them Latin verb conjugations, for sweet hell’s sake!
“We’ve been here five or so months,” Leonard said. “But don’t expect the boys to grow by leaps and bounds. Emma wove that spell good and tight—she and I aren’t exactly immortal anymore, but they’re not exactly mortal, either. We figured five for every hundred. More if they use their human forms a lot, less if….” Mullins saw he was looking at Francis with worry in his eyes. “They tried so hard to get him out, you see. And he got caught one day while the boys were both… busy. He didn’t want to tell them… kept it close. The damage it did to his soul—well, he’s going to be a cat for much of his life until it’s gone, you understand?”
Mullins nodded, his red haze intensifying. And still he couldn’t help ask, “Edward too?” The boy seemed so even, so calm.
“He was pretty—he was treated better than Harry, but yes.”
It wasn’t a haze anymore. Mullins had to fight it from taking over his entire body. He knew this feeling, this liquid, viscous sludge pouring through his veins.
This was the gift of hell, the gift of a killer’s blood.
“Mullins,” Leonard hissed. “Your eyes!”
Mullins cleared his throat. “I need to take my leave,” he murmured. “Do you have any other names for me besides Big Cass?”
Leonard knew why he asked. “Bertha was the proprietress. And Edward has told me about a few customers who were particularly brutal.” Leonard gave him the names without remorse—which reassured Mullins, actually. Rage was not just a demonic trait. He could feel this weight in his breast and still be human.
“Is that all?” Best to be thorough here.
“Yes. Don’t harm any of the girls.” Leonard nodded decisively. “They worked hard to protect the boys for as long as possible. Think of it like hell—the demons in power have choices and they choose to abuse their power. The demons without power are victims—”
“Until they become abusers.” Some of the red faded from Mullins’s head. This was Leonard’s best lesson, and Mullins would be better off if he never forgot it.
“Indeed.” Leonard met his eyes then and made the gesture to take away their little bubble of secrecy. The chatter from the kitchen intruded on Mullins’s dark thoughts, and for a moment his emotions were etched in crystal.
Emma was the mother and Leonard was the father—that much had never been clearer.
The boys were their children—of course.
But he had a use too—a service besides teaching them Latin—which he would do many, many, many more times in the future.
As far as he was concerned, this other thing was the reason he’d become a demon at all.
He managed to be polite and kind as they wrapped up the grammar lesson. When it was over, one at a time, they stood and bowed.
“Thank you for the lesson, Mullins,” Edward said, so incredibly polite he must have studied.
“’Preciate it,” Harry muttered, face flushed. “Wish ye could eat. Would feel better if we could repay ya.”
Mullins knew his beast’s eyes grew wider. “This was a gift, young master,” he said gently.
Harry’s mouth worked. “Not good at accepting those.” He looked mournfully around the snug little cabin. “I’ll try to get better. But you’re a good man to come help. Thank you.”
“Of course,” Mullins said gravely, wondering what was to come from Francis.
Francis sat at the hearth in cat form, washing his paws until Edward nudged him with his sock-clad toe. “C’mon, Francis, don’t be an ass.”
The cat let out a growl, then abruptly turned into the enchantingly fey and beautiful young man with the white hair, and bowed.
“Thank you,” he said, meeting Mullins’s eyes with must have been a supreme effort.
Mullins inclined his head. “My pleasure.”
And Francis was a cat again.
Mullins felt something in his chest that displaced the rage, if only for a moment. “This family was a balm to my bleeding soul,” he said, because demons could speak the truth. “Please summon me as often as you wish.”
“We release you,” the boys all said as one, and Mullins felt the pull of hell again.
He allowed himself to fade, but he didn’t go directly back to his catacomb in hell.
First he passed a spell of deception over himself. Unlike being summoned, when the compulsion was to present himself in his real form, visiting an unwary human allowed him a certain leeway.
In this case, he allowed himself to look like a typical human of the era. Dirty, unshaven, black stubble growing from his jaw, he wore rank and threadbare breeches, battered boots, and a cotton shirt that had seen many washes, none of them recent.
Then he arrived at his destination.
Sacramento was a gold rush city, with ankle-breaking cobblestones in the streets and a dock for ships traveling up the delta to bring supplies. The high boardwalks tried to keep the shops and apartments from getting wet in the floods that invariably tormented the region every ten years or so, but the horse-drawn carts that rolled down the road and the river delta itself left the streets and boardwalks covered with silt and mud and shit.
It had potential to be a town someday, but today?
Today Mullins lumped the whole place in with the wolves and deer at the Golden Child.
He found the brothel on the edge of the town proper, along the railroad tracks, and his heart hurt. The boys had been hiding under bushes, escaping. How hard must it have been to see a train every day, going someplace other, someplace else, and to be stuck here in a torment of other’s making.
Human form or not, he allowed the red of rage to fill up his eyes.
He crashed through the doors of the Golden Child Saloon and Brothel like the forces of the Apocalypse on the greased wheels of hell.
Nobody looked up. Nobody cared.
A prematurely old woman, face caked in paint, sauntered up to him. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Bertha,” he said, voice husky.
“She’s in session with Bruno,” the woman said, eyes crusted thick with kohl shifting uneasily.
Mullins knew this name.
It was a place to start.
“Show me,” he rumbled, and the woman blinked, her mind exhausted by just the command.
“Of course,” she said.
Mullins smiled the death’s head grin of the beast.
Let the revenge begin.
WHEN HE walked away from the brothel that night, he was one of many fleeing. The girls were, as Leonard had asked, unharmed, mostly dressed, running for their lives to the train station in the night.
Mullins had made sure they had as much money as they needed.
There were a lot trousers that would not be put back on after this night.
He hadn’t gotten all the names that Leonard had given him—but he would.
Right now it was best to just fade into the night and let others wash off the blood.
Nobody would hurt those boys again. Not under Mullins’s watch. Emma was the mother, Leonard was the father, the boys were the children, and Suriel was the protector.
But this family was special, and they needed Mullins in the capacity for which he could best serve.
Mullins was the avenger, and nobody would hurt his boys again.
Planning A Demon’s Demise
Present
EDWARD MANAGED to calm down, hating that his brothers had seen him this distraught.
He was the reasonable one. One hundred fifty-five years to cement his identity, f
rom birth to the day he was made a familiar, through to the present, and he had always been the reasonable one.
“You are such a nelly,” Harry said disgustedly, helping him sit down.
Edward glared at him. “Thanks a lot—”
“No, not because you cried, you ass, because you’re all up inside your own head. Oh my God, did you think only you, Edward Youngblood, could go about and find the secret ingredients to make a demon human again?” Harry rolled his eyes and pitched his voice high and hysterical. “This is my quest because I am the scholar and my brothers are too goddamned brain dead to even get out the front door without me—and I’m doomed, doomed, doomed because I am doing this all by myself and—”
“You used to haunt the beach for months, you fuckwad,” Edward said irritably. “Remember that? Oh, where’s Harry? He’s walking along the cliffs, gazing moodily into the sea, and thinking that his angel will never be able to come down and be with him.” Edward shook his head at Suriel, who was grinning in delight. “He was insufferable.”
“He tried to do that with me in his bed,” Suriel told them all happily. “A rogue wave almost washed him out to sea in cat form. It was amazing.”
Francis burst into peals of laughter, and Beltane’s thunderous chuckle practically rattled their desert plane.
“Thanks, beloved,” Harry said dryly. “I’m sure they all wanted to know that.”
“Oh, but we did!” Francis howled, and Harry smacked him on the back of the head.
“Knock it off.” He turned to Edward then, all trace of teasing gone from his brown eyes. “So, what we need to know is how much of your list you’ve knocked off and what else it is you need.”
Edward sighed.
“That’s the problem,” he said, giving Harry the carefully hand-copied spell he’d managed to make from a singed piece of parchment Leonard had smuggled out of hell. “Here’s my list of ingredients—most of which were one of a kind and got blown up in the damned minivan.”
He handed Harry another hand-scrawled page. “And this is the list of instructions. Everything here is one of a kind and irreplaceable. The instructions are impossible—particularly in this day and age—”