Familiar Demon

by Amy Lane

  She was holding the shields together. They were feeding her power.

  No wonder she swore like a sailor. If Edward wielded that much power while parenting two infants, he’d have a one-word vocabulary.

  “I think,” Edward said carefully, “that we have to start at the beginning.”

  “It’s a good story,” Beltane said, arms tight around Francis. “The first time I heard it I cried.”

  Suddenly the cat across from them was a girl again, not even bothering to pull her sundress modestly against her barely-there breasts. “You are someone’s precious little summer child and honey baby sweetie face, aren’t you?”

  Beltane nodded at her, smiling. “Yes—my parents and brothers adore me. How did you know?”

  The girl shook her head and turned back into a cat, the better to look superior while she washed her hind leg.

  Edward realized what that position would look like if she stayed a girl and blushed.

  Cory let out a sigh. “I’m sorry, Edward. If you wanted to continue?”

  Edward opened his mouth, and Mullins put a hand on his, lacing fingers, making him pause.

  “My beginning,” he said softly. “Then yours.”

  Oh. Edward brought his knuckles to his lips and kissed. “Of course, beloved. Bel and Francis haven’t heard this. It is time.”

  He yearned for Harry next to him, being caustic and steady, but looking at the Lady Cory and her men, he thought maybe they would help fill the void while Harry was being healed.

  Mullins squeezed his hand again and began.

  When he got to the part about the red man—or the blue man, as it were—making love to him in a field of night-blooming flowers, and then confessing to his lover the next day, Cory sighed.

  “That sucks,” she said softly. “I’m sorry. I mean, no, it wasn’t okay to go kiting off with the next supernatural being at your window, but seriously. Supernatural. I mean, I bet he fucked like a god.”

  Suddenly she stopped and looked at Bracken, who widened his eyes.

  “Yes,” Bracken said, so shocked his voice came out stiff, like wood. “Your lover fucked like a god. Of course he did. No reason he wouldn’t have. Fucking Christ.”

  They stared at each other for a fraught moment, speaking bibles full of truth without a single word, and then turned their attention back to Mullins.

  “Go on, sweetheart,” Cory said with renewed purpose. “Besides company, the kids are really only asleep for another forty-five minutes or so. Burning daylight.”

  Mullins continued, and Edward felt his hand grow damp when he spoke of selling himself into servitude.

  Cory nodded. “Okay,” she said softly. “So, you were a demon. That’s the shit right there. I’m impressed. Tell me about hell. Was there a grand pooh-bah there, or was it mostly run by demons?”

  “Run by demons,” Mullins said promptly. “That’s one of the first things you figure out. There is no grand pooh-bah. You end up in service of whoever recruited you. There’s no compulsion to do evil. There’s punishment if you disobey, but you’re immortal. You’ll survive. Escape is possible—Edward’s father and I worked as scribes, and we wrote the spell down, verbatim, to file away. It was trivia, given to us to annoy us into screaming boredom, but what we scribed was real.”

  Cory’s mouth pulled up. “Oh, I don’t doubt that for a moment,” she said grimly. “So, tell me about Edward’s father.”

  Mullins talked then about how he and Leonard covered for each other, and how Mullins had gathered Leonard up and taken him to the clearing that fateful night, because he was afraid Leonard might be too weak to answer the summons, and he didn’t want to see the hordes of hell loosed on Emma.

  “So, once Leonard was human, completely, that was it? No hordes of hell?” she asked, meeting eyes with Bracken again.

  “No. I fled into the forest, to lead them away while Suriel and Emma finished—”

  “So, Emma knew Suriel too?” Nicky asked, looking at them like they were reading his favorite romance book aloud.

  “Yes,” Edward said, picking up the thread. “She and Suriel had helped Mullins and Leonard gather the ingredients to put in the hex bags—”

  “How come you don’t use hex bags?” Nicky asked Cory.

  “Because Goddess is kind, and I’m just a sexually powered nuclear fusion generator,” she retorted pertly. “Seriously. Can you see me organizing a fucking hex bag? Following a list? She knows what sort of weak clay she has to work with and doesn’t give me any goddamned more to worry about than I’ve already got.”

  Nicky held up his free hand in self-defense. “Okay, you’re right. If that’s the difference between God’s magic and Goddess’s, I’d have to admit, it was apportioned appropriately all around. They seem better suited for all that spellcasting stuff, and you’re pretty damned good as a power generator. I can deal.”

  “I’m so relieved,” Cory responded dryly. “Now go on—how did you boys end up being there? I mean, you’re telling the story—I assume you were there.”

  “All except Beltane,” Edward said, and Bel smirked at him and piped up.

  “I’m Emma and Leonard’s actual flesh and blood son. I’m the only one here who’s as young as I look.”

  Nicky snorted. “Twenty-two?”

  “Yes—”

  “I’m twenty-four. Cory’s twenty-two—”

  “Three?” she said. “Please—I have to be twenty-three already.”

  “Fine,” Nicky sighed, rolling his eyes. “Twenty-three. Grandma.”

  “Fuck off. Edward, go on.”

  Edward raised his eyebrows, and he and Mullins exchanged self-deprecating glances. Okay. Emma squared. She was Emma on speed. She was literally a small goddess, sitting in the garden nursing her children.

  Humbling was not even the word for it.

  “We had just escaped a brothel,” he said, biting his lip.

  The people on the blanket sobered immediately. “How old were you?”

  “Well, Harry and I were around fourteen, and Francis was a few years younger. We… we were trying to get Francis away before he had to work for his living too.”

  The concern on Cory’s face sharpened, and she and Bracken had another one of those eyeball-to-eyeball conversations. She turned to Francis, a study in gentleness.

  “Were they in time, little brother?” she asked softly.

  Francis looked away.

  “That’s… that’s a terrible thing for one of the Goddess’s children.” She grimaced. “It’s a terrible thing for any child, any person. But elves are… are wired very sensitively. You’ve survived, sane. Well done, little brother.”

  Francis seemed to melt into Beltane’s arms at the praise, and Edward’s heart ached a little. Maybe he needed more of that and less of their actively voiced worry.

  “So, about the cats,” Cory said, pulling them from their lapse into quiet. “Was that part of the spell to bring Leonard back?”

  “It demanded a great deal of power,” Edward said. “And she was the only one there. She knew that it would strip her completely if she didn’t store the bulk of it somewhere. We were hiding in the bushes, and she stored it in us, making us her familiars. Then she offered us sanctuary, if we would only stay with them long enough to teach us what to do with our new power.” Edward looked at Francis. “Leonard only just told me that they did that more for us than for Emma.”

  Francis rolled his crossed blue eyes. “Even I knew that,” he said, as though bored.

  “For you?” Cory asked, smiling.

  “They… they made us into a family,” Edward said after a moment. “And later, when she and Leonard wanted to have Beltane, they knew they’d have to give some of their immortality into making him. We all… shared, I guess. So they didn’t become old overnight. And we learned—it’s more an art, really. But the thing is, I think with all of us here—my brothers and Suriel—we can bring Mullins over and… you know. Redistribute. It wouldn’t be too big a sacrifice for any on
e of us. I think it’s a ratio of—”

  Cory held up her hand and smirked. “Oh please. No math. Believe me, Edward, you don’t have to break down power distribution and collective sharing. I know you have no idea who we are, but if you believe nothing else, believe me when I tell you we know. So, why did you all come here anyway? You could have done this from home!”

  This sounded so trivial in the face of Lady Cory’s competence. “We need three hairs from an elven king,” Edward said grimly. “That’s all. But as soon as we left home, we felt the forces of hell slam into us. We hadn’t been planning to bring them here but—”

  Bracken rolled his eyes. “They would have shown up here sooner or later,” he grunted. “And your sick brother?”

  “We didn’t think he’d be quite so ill,” Edward said with a sigh. “At first we thought it was because he’d exhausted himself. He was teleporting us all over the world to get the damned ingredients, and then he got shot by poachers and—”

  “He sent us somewhere so he could rest, and it was sort of an alien dimension,” Beltane said. “It smelled totally disgusting, and we think he picked up bacteria there that he can’t kick.”

  Nicky shook his head, enchanted. “It’s like every time one of them opens his mouth, a better story kicks in. How do they do that?”

  Cory eyed him grimly. “Nicky thinks they’re entertaining, Arturo. Do you think they’re entertaining?”

  The powerfully built elf with the copper-lightning eyes gave her a measuring look. “Remember when you set those infected werewolves on fire and catapulted them into the lake?”

  “Yeah,” Cory said, a beatific smile on her plain face. “That was fun.”

  “That was mildly entertaining. I have the feeling that was like watching a video on television compared to what’s about to happen.”

  “Which will be?” Cory cocked an eyebrow at him, and Edward got the feeling of two seasoned generals, sizing up a battle.

  “It’s going to be a grand stage spectacle,” Arturo said grimly. “Like Cirque du Soleil without the hot women.”

  Cory’s eyes grew wide. “Awesome.” She turned back to Edward. “So, are we your last stop? Because I’ve got to tell you, I don’t see you leaving this place until we’ve changed this one fully human and gotten rid of the motherfuckers pounding at our shields right now.”

  “No,” Mullins said, looking at Edward unhappily. “We need… well, a descendant, or a descendent of one of my family members—”

  “Don’t worry,” Cory said. “We’ve got it handled.”

  Bracken smirked. “I was wondering about that—the resemblance is uncanny.”

  “Right?” Nicky nodded animatedly. “She said his name, and I was like, ‘Holy shit!’ It’s like… well, fuck.”

  “Fate,” Cory said grimly.

  “Or the other hand of fate,” Bracken retorted, and she rewarded him with a grin.

  “Wait!” Edward held up a hand. “Please—what are you talking about?”

  “Oh.” Cory rolled her eyes. “Mullins—his descendent is currently speeding toward the hill in a stolen car. The resemblance is fucking freaky. Don’t worry. Sam—he’s the son of a human and the other. He’s a pain in the ass, but you’ll love him. Sweet kid. Has your eyes.” And then, before they could collect themselves, she turned to Edward. “I have one question.”

  “Fine.” Well, not fine. Mullins’s descendent was on his way? What in the hell?

  “Okay, I’ve got several questions. I’ll try to go slow. Number one—I’m going to assume that you’re using… well, God’s magic, which doesn’t sound right because I went to church, but it is basic spellcasting that’s based on a patriarchal world view. So that’s what you’re using to shapeshift, right?”

  “Right,” Edward said, wondering where this was going, even as Cory breathed a sigh of relief.

  “It’s not blood-based,” she said to Bracken. “Little brother’s change. All of our problems have been with blood-based changes.”

  “Oh thank Goddess,” the girl on the blanket said, suddenly a girl again. “Because seriously, I was waiting for him to wig out on me.”

  “If you don’t let him turn into a cat soon, he might,” Edward said frankly, but Cory shook her head and turned to Francis.

  “Little brother? You may wander the grounds. You may walk up the hill and get an education. You may even swim in the pond, although there is something in there that might eat you. You can go in the house—stay away from the darkling. But you need to stay human until Green says otherwise. Don’t worry—the cat isn’t his to control, but this is his home, and he will have his say. I know this is hard—very hard.” Her firmness softened. “Even Renny there knows how hard it is because Green’s done it to her. But there are things in your heart that Green needs to address, and he can’t do that if you’re not yourself, understand?”

  Francis nodded unhappily, his eyes tearing up. Beltane wrapped his arms around Francis’s shoulders, and it was a testament to how rattled Francis was that he simply rested his head on Beltane’s chest and patted it disconsolately.

  Cory met Edward’s eyes with grim compassion. “How long has he been allowed to do that? Retreat into the cat when things got uncomfortable?”

  Edward shrugged. “A hundred and forty… one. One hundred and forty-one years.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “It’s good, living forever.”

  Wait. “You don’t have an extended lifespan?”

  And she tried to make her own shrug insouciant—but failed. “My only regret is that I’ll be dragging Bracken into mortality with me. Nicky will live as long as Green does, so they won’t be alone. We take what we can get. I’m only saying that your brother is wet-wired to respond to a king—and a king’s job would be to make him face himself. I know….” She grimaced. “Mothers like to think that they’re all their children need. But Francis needs Green in his life—at least for a little while—or he’ll never be able to fulfill the promise of him and Beltane. Your family needs to think about that and decide how you want to proceed. Green will be available whenever he’s ready.”

  Edward swallowed, heart aching in spite of the other things going on in his life. “Beltane has three more years being educated at Oxford—there’s a coven there related to Emma, and he’s promised he’ll stay out his training. Francis… we can come with him, here, while Bel’s away.”

  She leaned forward and patted his cheek. “So good. You all are so good. You all work that out how you need to. This isn’t a prison sentence. Think of it as a stay with relatives if you want. But you do need to think of it.”

  “What’s your other question?” His heart hurt too much as it was.

  “It can wait until after lunch,” she said, scrambling to her feet and moving the cushion to make room. Out of nowhere, several platters of food arrived—crusty home-baked bread, cheese, thick cuts of meat—even a trencher of sausage patties that Bracken eyed with distaste but everyone else looked excited about. “I’m starving—but when we’re done, you need to explain how you make hex bags. Because the minute Sam gets here with his big blue eyes, we’re gonna scalp Green and it’ll be game on.”

  The food was delicious. Edward and Mullins sat shoulder to shoulder, making quiet conversation about everything, from the seasoning in the sausage to the softness of the bread. Even Francis came out of his funk a little to lean forward and eat the cheese sandwich Beltane made for him.

  Bel, of course, would have eaten the entire repast—but Bracken and Nicky kept snagging food and slipping it onto Cory’s plate. It almost seemed to be a game with them, except sometimes Cory would catch them and scowl. As lunch was wrapping up, Cory held her hand out, and Edward watched in fascination as a tiny being, surrounded by sparkly silver light, landed on her palm.

  “Hello there,” she said softly. “I wanted to thank you for all your hard work today. Can you thank your brothers and sisters for me?”

  The little creature nodded excitedly, and Cory smiled. “Would
you kindly ask Katy and Jack to come out, then? I was going to spend the day out with the children, but I think I’m going to need some help today.”

  More excited bouncing, and this time Cory grimaced. “No, my love. I think we’re going to need to work in the new vampire room for the time being. The children hate that room, and I don’t blame them. If you could have some science tables and a cauldron and maybe some Bunsen burners moved in there—remember not to touch the iron or steel, my darlings. Ask Teague to organize the werecreatures for you, okay?”

  More happy nodding, and little sparkles seemed to fly from the tiny winged person. “Also, if nobody’s done so yet, tell the angels in the grove that there is another angel here on the hill. His beloved needs healing, but they may want to say hello before all this is over.”

  This time the thing in her palm drooped and made a sad little buzz.

  “You’ve seen him, then? Yes, his wings are missing. But that is his story to tell. We have enough new stories to work with—you should ask him yourself. But wait for his beloved to feel better. Nobody’s happy when their lover is ill.”

  The creature’s nodding turned more subdued, and Cory made an air kiss at it.

  “You’re perfection. Can you remember all that I told you? Good. Thank you again for all you’ve done, yes?”

  And the thing flew off, leaving loopty-loop trails of sparkle glitter in its wake.

  “Do you think he… she—” Edward floundered.

  “She,” Cory said. “She will remember everything I just told her, and will even remember what I let Nicky and Bracken sneak me for seconds and what I did not. She will also remember to bring me root beer on ice, which makes me sound like the queen of everyfuckin’thing, but I asked for it once after lunch and they haven’t forgotten it in the two years since.” She nodded. “The sprites are lovely people, but I live in fear of ever offending one. Their memories are longer than Bracken’s johnson.”